How Formulators Can Solve the Raw Materials Data Chaos

It’s surprising how often the same conversation happens.
A formulator joins a first call, hesitates for a second, and then says, almost apologetically:
“Honestly… raw materials data is a nightmare for us.”

Sometimes they laugh when they say it.
Sometimes they sound exhausted.

And then the story unfolds.

“We have spreadsheets. Several.
We have PDFs from suppliers.
Some data sits in our lab tool.
Some lives in people’s heads.
And somehow, we’re supposed to trust all of it.”

What always strikes us is this: these teams are not disorganized. They are overwhelmed.

Not because they don’t work hard, they do.
But because managing raw materials across projects, suppliers, markets, and regulations has become a daily grind. The bigger the company, the bigger the problem to solve. And the more the business grows, the more fragile everything feels.

That’s exactly why so many formulation teams come to us. Across coatings, adhesives, elastomers, cosmetics, HI&I, food, different industries, same pain.

So let’s start with the real problem: why raw materials data has become so hard to manage, and why its impact goes far beyond formulation itself. 

“It works… until it really doesn’t”

One formulator once told us:

“As long as nothing changes, we survive.”

And that’s exactly the problem.

Raw material data tends to “work” when:

• the portfolio is stable
• regulations don’t change too fast
• suppliers behave consistently
• the same people stay in the company

But formulation teams don’t live in that world anymore.

The moment something shifts, a regulation update, a supplier change, a new market, a scale-up, an audit, the cracks appear.

People double-check everything.
Data gets copied “just to be safe”.
Nobody is really sure which version is the right one.

And trust slowly erodes.

What makes this particularly painful is that raw materials data sits at the center of multiple critical processes:

• formulation and R&D decisions
• regulatory compliance and documentation (PIFs, registrations, audits)
• procurement and sourcing (second sources, alternatives, supplier changes)
• sustainability initiatives (certifications, Digital Product Passports)
• sales and market access (what can be sold, where, and under which conditions)

When raw materials data is unreliable, all these processes slow down or break.

When “PIM” sounds like the wrong answer

Interestingly, many formulators are initially skeptical when they hear “PIM” or Product Information Management systems

They associate it with:
“a marketing tool”,
“another heavy and rigid software”,
“a system that will force us to change how we work”.

We get it. And frankly, if that were true, we wouldn’t recommend it either.

In formulation, the challenge is not to add yet another tool.
It’s to finally have a reliable foundation for raw materials data.

A place where:

• a raw material has a clear identity, with shared naming and definition rules
• grades and suppliers are not mixed up
• properties are structured, not buried in documents
• versions are controlled and traceable
• regulatory, sustainability, and technical attributes are connected

Not a new layer of complexity, a point of clarity.

This is usually the moment when teams realize that the issue is not tooling, but data ownership and governance.

“Can’t the lab system handle that?”

This question comes up more and more.

Advanced formulation teams invest in LIMS, formulation tools, AI experimentation platforms, and it’s tempting to let each system manage “its own” version of raw materials data.

But this is where many projects quietly go wrong.

One client put it very simply:

“We realized we had three ‘truths’ for the same raw material, and none of them matched.”

Lab tools are excellent at what they do: experiment tracking, results analysis, workflow optimization.

But when they start owning raw materials master data, things get blurry.

Our recommendation is always the same: keep the golden record of raw materials data in a system designed for that purpose.

The product data backbone remains the single source of truth. Lab and AI tools consume that data, enrich it with results and insights, and feed information back, without redefining the product itself.

That’s how you avoid breaking the chain between R&D, regulatory, procurement, sustainability, and the business.

When external data becomes an accelerator, not a distraction

Once raw materials data becomes more reliable, something changes.

Teams stop spending their time fixing inconsistencies and start focusing on better decisions.

That’s often when external chemical data enters the conversation: regulatory information, standardized technical data, insights on alternatives, or market availability.

Used properly, this kind of data doesn’t replace internal knowledge.It helps teams move faster, with more confidence, and less rework.

But none of this works without a solid foundation first.External data only creates value when it builds on data teams already trust.

A different way to think about raw materials master data

At this stage, formulation teams are rarely asking for “a PIM project”.

What they really want is much simpler, and much more concrete: a reliable raw materials master data foundation.

They want to know:

• what a raw material really is
• which information can be trusted
• whether the data used in formulation, regulatory files, sourcing, sustainability, and market access is consistent

This is exactly the problem ionicPIM Solutions is designed to solve.

ionicPIM is not a generic data management tool adapted to chemistry. It is a solution built specifically for chemical use cases, with pre-configured structures and templates designed around raw materials, substances, grades, properties, regulations, and applications.

Beyond the software itself, ionicPIM Solutions also removes a major burden from formulation teams: the tedious work of aggregating, digitizing, standardizing, and maintaining chemical master data.

Through continuously maintained product and regulatory information extracted from SpecialChem Master Catalogs, formulation teams can:

• accelerate raw material onboarding
• rely on up-to-date regulatory and technical information
• work with standardized data without rebuilding everything from scratch

This data doesn’t replace internal expertise. It complements it, and allows teams to spend less time chasing information, and more time making formulation decisions.

Seen this way, ionicPIM Solutions combines chemical-specific software and trusted chemical data to help formulation teams move from daily data firefighting to confident, scalable decision-making, without forcing rigid models or disruptive transformations.

Want to see what this looks like for your team?
Discover how ionicPIM Solutions help formulation teams structure raw material data, through software and validated data, starting from their reality. Explore how formulators use ionicPIM to regain control over raw materials.

Talk to our experts about your raw material data challenges.