What a tile manufacturer should digitise first

For a tile manufacturer the first thing to digitise is the catalogue with batch and packaging data attached — not the catalogue as a list of designs, but as a structure that carries size, surface, thickness, pieces per box and coverage per box. Every system you build afterwards depends on those numbers, and almost every tile business we have worked with had them scattered across a brochure, a price list and someone’s spreadsheet.

The general argument for catalogue-first holds across building materials. What follows is what makes tile different.

Why is packaging data the part that matters?

Because tile is sold by the box, and almost nothing downstream works without knowing what a box contains.

Consider what breaks when pieces-per-box and coverage-per-box are not held as structured data:

• A calculator cannot convert area into an order quantity
• A dealer portal shows stock in a unit the dealer does not order in
• Quotations are wrong at the rounding step, which is where shortfalls come from
• Freight cannot be estimated, because weight per box is unknown
• Anyone quoting has to look it up in a PDF and often guesses

It is unglamorous data. It is also the difference between a system that produces order quantities and one that produces square metres and leaves someone to finish the job by hand.

Where does batch fit in?

Immediately after, and it needs to be designed in rather than added later.

Shade and calibre vary between production runs, so two boxes of the same SKU are not always interchangeable. If batch is not a first-class field travelling with stock through dispatch and into the dealer’s hands, it becomes a note in a description — which cannot be filtered, reported on, or used to stop someone selling a mismatched top-up.

Retrofitting batch tracking into a system designed without it is a rebuild, not an enhancement. This is the single most common architectural mistake in tile software.

What comes second?

Dealer order capture — and for tile specifically, with stock availability alongside it.

The reason is the phone call it removes. In most tile businesses a meaningful share of inbound calls are dealers asking whether something is in stock, in which size, and in which batch. Answering that in a portal does three things at once: it removes the call, it gives dealers a reason to use the system, and it produces order data as a by-product rather than asking dealers to enter it for your benefit.

That exchange matters. We have written about why dealer systems fail when they only serve the manufacturer in why your dealers do not use the app you built them.

What is specific to tile and often left too late?

Thing	Why it gets postponed	Why that is a mistake
Display and sample stock	It is not really inventory	It is real stock that has left the warehouse and will mostly never sell
Architect and specifier records	They never place an order	They determine which product is specified, months before the order
Product images at usable resolution	Marketing owns the images	Every dealer portal, visualiser and website needs them
Discontinued product history	It is finished	Customers return years later needing a match

Sample and display tracking is the one businesses are most surprised by. Panels in showrooms, boards with architects, tiles fixed to display walls — for a manufacturer supplying hundreds of dealers this is a substantial quantity of product that has left the building and is rarely accounted for anywhere.

What should wait?

Visualisers and calculators. Genuinely valuable, and they depend entirely on the catalogue being correct. A visualiser built on inconsistent product data shows customers finishes you cannot supply; a calculator without real box counts returns square metres rather than an order. Build the data, then the tools — which is the sequence our own products followed.

Secondary sales reporting. Needs dealers already using something. Ask for it before they have a reason to log in and you will get compliance data, not market data.

Dashboards. Six months of transactions first, or you will be reading your own adoption curve as though it were demand.

A reasonable order for a tile manufacturer

1. Catalogue — size, surface, thickness, pieces and coverage per box, weight, images
2. Batch-aware stock, designed in from the start
3. Dealer stock visibility and order capture
4. Compliance — e-invoicing and statutory reporting where applicable
5. Display and sample tracking
6. Specifier and project records
7. Customer-facing tools — visualiser, calculator
8. Reporting, once there is something to report on

Most businesses want to begin at seven, because that is what customers see and what competitors have. Starting there means building on data that is not ready, and rebuilding when it becomes ready.

Common questions

Our ERP already has the catalogue. Is that enough?

Check what it actually holds. Many hold enough for accounting — code, description, rate — and nothing usable for selling: no coverage per box, no images, no surface or calibre as structured fields. That gap is the work.

How long does catalogue work take for a tile business?

The structure is quick to design. Gathering accurate packaging data across every size and product is the slow part, particularly where it differs between plants or has changed over time. Budget for that specifically.

We are a dealer, not a manufacturer. Does this change?

The principle holds, but the catalogue problem is harder because you carry several brands with different structures and packaging conventions. Merging them into one usable view is the first job.

Can we do catalogue and dealer portal together?

Often sensible — the portal gives the catalogue an immediate use, which keeps it accurate. Just agree the catalogue structure before building the portal on top of it.

More on this: what to digitise first and why generic ERP breaks. For how we work with this trade, see tiles & ceramics.