BMEcat

BMEcat was developed by the German Association for Supply Chain Management, Procurement, and Logistics (BME) to standardize electronic catalog exchange in B2B. The problem it solves: procurement departments want to load supplier catalogs into their e-procurement systems digitally, but every supplier delivers a different format. BMEcat defines the common standard.

A BMEcat document contains every relevant piece of product information: product descriptions, prices, image references, classification data (often eCl@ss-based), and structural hierarchies. E-procurement systems like SAP Ariba, Jaggaer, and Coupa import BMEcat files natively. Suppliers who can deliver BMEcat lower the bar to getting listed by large buyers.

Pimcore PIM uses BMEcat as a native export channel. Product data is maintained centrally and published as BMEcat XML at the push of a button. Attributes are mapped to the BMEcat structure, classifications are encoded against eCl@ss, images are referenced. That reduces the manual effort for catalog delivery measurably.