Supplier
A supplier is any business you buy stock from, whether it made the products or not, and usually the source of the spreadsheet that describes them.
What it means
A supplier is whoever you buy products from: a manufacturer selling direct, a distributor or a wholesaler. For product data, the supplier is also where the data starts, usually as a spreadsheet exported from its own system.
That file is built for the supplier, not for you. The columns are named for its warehouse, the categories are in its words, and the codes mean something to its stock room rather than to your shoppers. Every new supplier brings a new version of the same problem.
So map each supplier’s columns to your fields once and reuse the mapping on every file it sends. Keep the original file untouched as well: Microsoft says Excel “automatically removes leading zeros, and converts large numbers to scientific notation”,1 which is damage when those numbers are barcodes.
Think of it like this
Whoever fills your stockroom is a supplier, whether that is the factory itself or a middleman. Its delivery notes are written for its own warehouse, not for your shop window.
For example
Two suppliers send fridge freezers. Supplier A has a column called Colour and puts all three dimensions in one cell, 1850x595x655. Supplier B has Finish/Colour and three columns, Height, Width and Depth. Each is mapped once to your Colour field and to height, width and depth in millimetres.
Why it matters
Each supplier’s file arrives with its own column names, spellings and codes, and the same product from two suppliers can arrive under two codes with one barcode. A mapping kept per supplier means its next file maps itself, and only a column you have not seen before needs a decision.
Not to be confused with
A supplier is not necessarily the manufacturer. Many are distributors selling other companies’ brands, so their file describes products they did not make, under codes of their own.
Sources
- Microsoft Support. Keeping leading zeros and large numbers.