Enterprise Intelligence Group
Why Your Category Managers Spend Too Much Time Looking for Information
Category managers don't have an information shortage. They have a retrieval problem: the answers exist somewhere in the business, but finding them takes longer than using them. Here's the fix.
Category managers don't have an information shortage. They have a retrieval problem: the answers they need exist somewhere in the business — in last year's range review deck, a supplier email thread, a planner's spreadsheet — but finding them takes longer than using them.
Watch a category team prepare for a review and you'll see it. The performance data comes out of the system in minutes. Then the real work starts: digging for why the range changed last time, what was agreed with the supplier in March, which store formats got the exception, what the promotion actually returned. Hours of hunting for knowledge the business already paid to create.
Where the time actually goes
The information a category decision needs is scattered by default:
- Decks — the reasoning behind past decisions, one review per file, named inconsistently.
- Spreadsheets — the working models, living in personal folders, versioned by initials.
- Email and Teams — supplier agreements, exception approvals, "as discussed" confirmations.
- People — the judgment and history that never made it into any document at all.
None of this is anyone's fault. It is what happens when knowledge has no home, no owner and no structure — every function creates intelligence daily, and almost none of it lands anywhere findable.
What it costs
The visible cost is time: senior commercial people doing document archaeology instead of trade strategy. The bigger costs are quieter. Decisions get made without the history ("we tried that in 2023") because the history couldn't be found in time. When a new category manager needs knowledge held in colleagues' heads or inboxes, make those sources and their owners identifiable rather than leaving the manager to discover them unaided. And every AI initiative inherits the mess: point an assistant at fragmented, conflicting files and it retrieves fragments and conflicts.
The fix is structural, not another folder
Better folder discipline doesn't survive contact with a trading week. What works is treating category knowledge as a governed asset:
- Map the decisions the category team makes repeatedly — range, delist, promote, exception.
- Consolidate the knowledge each decision needs — out of decks, threads and personal drives.
- Validate and assign owners — one authoritative version, someone accountable for keeping it true.
- Then add retrieval — search and AI assistants over the governed foundation, so the answer to "what did we agree with this supplier?" takes seconds, with the source cited.
A category assistant can support that last step by retrieving the approved decision history and showing its sources for the manager to check. Test the retrieved material against the actual question and record the effort involved before claiming a time saving. The preceding capture, validation and ownership work remains necessary.
Frequently asked questions
How much time do category managers spend searching for information?
Measure time spent locating and reconciling information separately from time spent analysing it and making the decision. Record the tasks, participants and sources involved during a category-review cycle. The results describe that observed cycle; the time needed to complete the review depends on the cycle selected and the people participating.
Won't better search software fix this on its own?
Search over ungoverned content returns ungoverned results — five versions of the truth, faster. Retrieval tools work when the content beneath them is consolidated, validated and owned. Fix the foundation, then the search.
What's the first practical step?
Map the recurring decisions of one category team and consolidate the knowledge those decisions need. It's a weeks-long effort, not a program — and it produces the foundation every later tool builds on.
Where to start
Pick one category and time-audit a single review cycle, recording where the preparation hours went. If a large share went to locating and reconciling information, that is the time the four steps above are intended to reduce, and the audit gives you the evidence to decide whether the consolidation work is worth doing.
EIG can help clarify the business decision, information requirements and practical next steps. Scope, participants, permitted sources and deliverables are agreed before the work begins.
Explore EIG's AI transformation practice or discuss your project.
Enterprise Intelligence Group provides retail, CPG and distribution consulting across business decisions, technology selection and delivery. Our services cover merchandising and assortment, forecasting and replenishment, pricing and promotion, space planning, data and integration, and implementation. AI transformation is a specialist practice, not a requirement for engaging EIG. Work starts with an agreed business question, scope, responsibilities and deliverables.
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