Ask a senior leader in UK construction about their product data quality, and almost all of them will tell you it is good. Ask the same person how digitally advanced their business is, and the answer changes completely.
MRA Research put both questions to 80 senior decision-makers across UK builders’ merchants and building materials manufacturers, all at businesses turning over at least £25 million. 98% are confident in the quality of their product data and 96% are confident in its accuracy. Then: just 20% describe their organisation as very digitally advanced, with digital systems well integrated across the business.
Those two numbers sit side by side in the same survey, from the same people. That distance is the most useful finding in the research. It explains why a sector that knows exactly what is coming keeps arriving late for it.
The figures here come from The State of Product Data in UK Construction 2026. MRA Research conducted it for Pimberly, in the field during April and May 2026. Download the full report.
Confidence in a spreadsheet that is coping
The two answers are not contradictory. They measure different things. The first asks whether today’s data is good enough for what the business does today, and for most, it is. Orders go out, the trade counter works, the catalogue is broadly right.
What that confidence rests on is the part worth examining. The interviews describe the reality plainly.
“Excel is just doing the job, but not well.”
E-commerce Coordinator, merchant
“You can refresh your spreadsheet, go and make a cup of coffee and come back and it’s still refreshing.”
Group Head of Product Information Management, merchant
One interviewee described a branch pricing from old invoices, with the database in question being Outlook. That is not a business with bad people or low standards. It is a business holding its product data together by effort, and that effort stays invisible because it has always been there. Callum Budd and Martin Balaam pick that gap apart in episode one of our podcast.
That effort also carries a price. The same research puts it at 26 hours a week, or roughly the full cost of one employee a year, spent managing and fixing product data. We covered that figure in the real cost of poor construction product data.
Where confidence in product data quality starts to crack
Push past the headline and the picture is less even.
On completeness, confidence drops: 79% are confident, and 21% are not. Completeness decides whether a product reaches a listing, a specification or a channel that refuses gaps. A fifth of the sector admitting doubt there matters more than the number suggests.
The split by function is sharper still. 25% of Commercial respondents are completely confident in the accuracy of their data, against 54% of IT and technology respondents. The people closest to the commercial consequences are the least sure. That is worth sitting with: the further you get from the customer, the better the data looks.
The sector expects to close the gap in five years
There is no shortage of intent. 79% expect to be very digitally advanced within five years, close to a four-fold jump on today. Merchants expect the bigger leap, from 10% today to 80%, an eight-fold rise. Manufacturers start further ahead at 30% and expect to reach 78%.
The research is careful about what that number is, and so should anyone quoting it be. The five-year jump measures appetite and expectation, not a forecast. Nothing in it guarantees the systems, ownership or budget will follow. It tells you the sector wants to move, which is not the same as the sector moving.
Readiness for what is actually coming
Where the gap becomes concrete is regulation. 95% are familiar with the Digital Product Passport. Only 22% are completely confident they have the infrastructure, tools and processes to support it. For CCPI it is 96% familiar and 29% ready.
And the function split repeats, wider than before: on DPP readiness, 7% of Commercial respondents are completely confident, against 31% of IT and technology respondents. The people who will feel the commercial consequences of getting DPP wrong feel least ready for it. 31% have already hit compliance or regulatory risks as a result of poor product data, so this is not a future problem for everyone.
This pattern is not unique to this research. GS1 UK and Barbour ABI’s 2026 research found that 98% are aware of the Building Safety Act but only 21% fully understand it. Nine in ten know of the “Golden Thread”, and just 14% fully understand what it requires. Across the sector, awareness of what is coming runs a long way ahead of readiness for it.
Awareness is not readiness, and neither is clean data
The blind spot is the assumption that confidence in today’s product data quality equals readiness for tomorrow’s demands. It doesn’t, because readiness is not an attribute of the data. It is a capability sitting on top of it.
That capability means four things: enriching a record for the audience buying it, governing who can change what, producing compliance evidence in whatever format a regulator or customer asks for, and pushing the result to every channel without re-keying it.
Most of the sector does not yet have it. 42% still have no PIM in place, while 69% already use AI or automation tools. The technology is arriving faster than the data foundations underneath it. That is how a business ends up automating a process nobody structured in the first place.
Rob Saunders, Head of Product and Quality Assurance at Ibstock, described what the alternative looks like in practice:
“At Ibstock, managing technical, sustainability and compliance data within a single governed source ensures everyone works from the same trusted information. Clear ownership and sign-off improve data quality, consistency and confidence across all customer and regulatory touchpoints.”
Rob Saunders, Head of Product and Quality Assurance, Ibstock
Note what builds that confidence. Not a belief that the data is fine, but ownership, sign-off and one governed source. That is confidence you can evidence.
Three questions worth asking internally
If you want to know which side of the gap your business is on, the survey questions are less useful than these:
- Could you produce complete, current compliance evidence for any product in your range this afternoon, without asking three people?
- If a supplier changed a specification today, how many places would need updating, and who would know to do it?
- Would your commercial team give the same product data quality rating as your IT team? If not, why does the difference exist?
Businesses that answer those cleanly are the 20%. Everyone else trusts a system that nothing has tested yet.
Helene Roberts, Managing Director UK and Ireland at Norcros plc, put the choice this way:
“Good quality and easy-to-access product information is becoming increasingly important for both us and our customers. Without clear and comprehensive product descriptions and specification details, the listing of products can so easily be impacted. This is why we see product data as a commercial opportunity and responsibility rather than an administrative one. I believe that as a sector we should take a proactive view on data rather than wait for regulation to drive change.”
Helene Roberts, Managing Director UK and Ireland, Norcros plc
A super-quick run through of the key features of Pimberly’s key PIM, DAM and automation functionality.
"With Pimberly we are able to get rich data, right the first time."
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