You Can't Hire Your Way Out of a Catalog Problem... But You Can Work Smarter

Most distribution leaders know their product catalog needs work. What they underestimate is why it's so hard to fix — and it's not a technology problem. It's a resource problem. The team required to run catalog operations at scale — taxonomy architects, data governance leads, enrichment specialists, data analysts — is a team that almost no mid-market or enterprise distributor can realistically build. In this episode, Matt names the capability gap for what it is and walks through three practical ways to start working around it: documenting the tribal knowledge that lives in your team's heads, protecting your senior people's strategic capacity, and honestly evaluating whether managed catalog operations might get you there faster than another open headcount req that sits on LinkedIn for six months.Key Takeaways:The catalog operations challenge isn't a technology gap — it's a capability and resource gap that hiring one more generalist won't solve.Tribal knowledge is a single point of failure. If your taxonomy logic and supplier rules live in someone's head, that's your first priority to fix.Your most experienced catalog person should be spending at least 60% of their time on strategy — not cleaning spreadsheets.If you've been stuck for more than a year, it may be time to evaluate managed catalog operations instead of trying to build internally.Connect with Matt on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/mattjohnson and learn more about Pivotree at pivotree.com.