Skulinker

We are a supplier development team, and we routinely collect large volumes of product information from potential suppliers. The materials arrive in inconsistent formats—including PDFs, Excel and CSV files, Word documents, catalogs, and images—and organizing them takes a significant amount of manual work.

Our first instinct was to enter everything into the product database in our ERP system. However, many of the products we collect never result in an actual order. Creating formal ERP records for all of them too early adds unnecessary work and leaves the ERP cluttered with product data that has not yet been commercially validated.

We realized that we needed another layer before ERP: a private product library where supplier materials collected from different channels could be archived, structured, searched, and evaluated without immediately becoming ERP master data.

When sales needs products for a customer, the team can first search this library, select the most suitable products, compare supplier information, and prepare a customer-facing product plan or quotation shortlist. Only the products that reach the appropriate stage need to move into the ERP system.

That experience led us to build Skulinker. It turns supplier files into structured, source-linked product records that teams can search, compare, and use when preparing customer product plans. It is not intended to replace a full ERP system; it focuses on organizing and evaluating supplier product information before ERP entry.

Skulinker is available to use now with a 30-day free trial.

I’m curious how other teams handle this problem. Do you also receive supplier product information in a mixture of PDFs, spreadsheets, Word documents, CSV files, catalogs, and images? At what point do you create formal ERP product records, and what do you use to manage the information before then?

I’d especially appreciate feedback on whether this pre-ERP workflow matches your experience and which part of the document-processing workflow is the hardest to automate reliably.