The €100,000 Problem: Why Manual Product Processes Slow Down Your Company

Workflows in PIM: Efficiency instead of Wait Loops

Last week, I was at a medium-sized machine engineering company. 450 employees, 12,000 product variants, an impressive 40 years on the market. The product manager demonstrated their “optimized” product implementation to me: an Excel list with 127 columns, 23 different email distribution lists, and a release process of 6 weeks.

“We are organized rather well,” he thought.

Followed by silence.

 

The Hidden Cost Factors

What this product manager did not see – and what I come to experience again and again in my 20+ years’ worth of PIM projects – are invisible time killers that systematically slow down companies. Not the obvious problems like “Excel is slow” or “emails go missing,” no. Much to the contrary, the really expensive traps are much more subtle.

 

Category of Traps 1: The Coordination Tax

A new product usually runs through 15–20 phases: The product management defines the specification, the marketing team writes the texts, the tech writing department creates datasheets, localizes translations, ecommerce maintains categories, and sales defines the price.

The Problem? Everybody is waiting for one another.

While the graphic designers are waiting for the finalized text, they cannot start working on the product images. The translator can only begin once marketing is done. The ecommerce manager is left hanging until all product data and images are available.

Reality: Within 6 weeks runtime, only 8–12 hours are effective worktime. The rest is waiting.

Cost Estimation: Given 50 product implementations a year and an average hourly wage of €65, we are looking at €130,000 in pure waiting time costs.

 

Category of Traps 2: The Context Switch Killer

Recently, a product manager told me: “On Mondays, I do releases. On Tuesdays, I check translations. On Wednesday, I create new products, …”

And that’s the crux of the matter! Every switch from task to task takes 15–25 minutes of getting back into the groove. The brain needs to regain its focus, re-contextualize, recollect the specifics.

Given 8–12 different product processes a day, this amounts to 2–3 hours of pure switching time.

 

Category of Traps 3: The Quality Escalation Spiral

This is what I identify immediately: Product data is copied manually from system to system, e-commerce teams “interpret” technical specifications, and marketing invents product properties because the datasheets are not finalized yet.

The consequence: 30–40% of all new products must suffer through a post-editing loop. Each and every post-correction is 5x more expensive than getting things right the first time.

 

The Workflow Turning Point: From Sequential to Intelligent

What if product implementation would no longer run like a conveyer belt chain but an intelligent orchestra?

Imagine the following:

• Parallel Editing: While the marketing team is writing texts, the system is automatically generating the first datasheets from tech data
• Intelligent Routing: Standard products go through the express workflow, complex novelties become intensive quality checks
• Proactive Escalation: The system identifies delays and resolves them automatically with plan-B scenarios

 

BPMN Meets PIM: Why Visual Automation Works

The reason why most workflow tools fail in PIM environments is simple: They are either too technical or too over-simplifying.

• Too technical: Only IT can operate them
• Too over-simplifying: Complex product processes cannot be mapped

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) resolves this dilemma elegantly.

It is internationally standardized, visually intuitive, and still expressive for complex automation.

Please have a look at this typical product release process:

What you can see here:

• Diamond Symbol and Decision Gateway: Decision point (e.g., standard product or custom development?) – Can run in parallel or be an exclusive decision based on parameters
• Service Tasks (green): Automatic actions
• User Tasks (orange): Human input required

The genius part: Your product managers understand it right away. No cryptic code snippets, no IT hieroglyphs.

 

The 5-Minute Reality

A real-case example: Recently, I implemented a seemingly simple automation workflow for an electrical retailer: “When new products are created, then automatically assign categories and boot price calculation.”

Effort in the old world: 3 emails, 2 Excel updates, 1 phone call, 45 minutes of editing time.

Effort with intelligent automation: 0 human interaction, 30 seconds of system runtime.

The result after 6 months:

• 67% faster time-to-market
• 89% less data errors
• €156,000 saved personnel cost

 

The Inconvenient Truth about Quick Fixes

But wait a moment – why do companies not simply solve such problems with more personnel or better Excel templates?

Because manual processes do not scale.

• 10% more products = 15% more effort (because of coordination overhead).
• Twice as any products = 3x more chaos.

I have seen companies that tried solving product complexity with more manpower. This works up to roughly 500–800 active SKUs. Any more, and the system collapses.

 

The Turning Point: When does Automation become a Must-Have?

After 20+ years of project experience, I recognize the warning signs immediately:

• Red Flag 1: Time-to-market of more than 8 weeks
• Red Flag 2: More than 3 “product experts” required
• Red Flag 3: Release processes with more than 5 phases
• Red Flag 4: Regular “data cleanup events”

If 2 or even more of the above points apply, the manual processes have hit their limit. What comes next?

In the next article, I demonstrate to you what a modern BPMN workflow looks like – step-by-step, with more real screenshots from ATAMYA Product Cloud. You will see how you can set up an automatism within 20 minutes that will save you 200+ hours each month.

Up until then, this will be the homework: Record the time your next product implementation takes. Take note of waiting steps, each loop of check-back questions, and every “I’ll have to double-check that” moment.

You will be surprised.