Managing product content relies on more than the search capabilities of a robust electronic catalog and the ability to access the information over the Internet. Firms that expect to substantially benefit from their e-business investments must also focus on the explicit business processes for creating and organizing product in-formation assets (the data elements themselves as well as associated metadata). Companies need to create and maintain elec-tronic catalogs of their product information as a critical first step towards developing integrated business proc-esses among business partners and customers.