Very ofen we do an initial import of multiple products from Excel when starting up a new PIM Ware house.
It may also happen when we setup integration from any ERP system.
Before doing so, we usually define any custom fields needed in PIM such as ProductBrand and ProducSubBrand as selectables plus multiple other fields.
Clients may have numerous of such fields, and the are somewhat a challange to get populated in PIM.
Two things makes this very difficult if not near impossible on large installations.
Today we have to isolate all the different brands and subbrands into an exel file and import that into the select values of each CustomField
After importing all the products into the PIM warehouse, we then have to construct a special import file that wil populate the actual product with the selctable vaue for that field.
The above procedure will work for a few customfields, but in PIM we often have a lot - perhabs hundreds with lots of values in selectables, which cause some grief with clients in this category.
It would instead be of great help, if the import could populate the selectable field values on the fly during import and also set the selected value on the product it self.