Importing data from excel to Illustrator or Indesign

Hi all,

I have a client for whom I have to design catalog with more than 5000 products distributed in groups of 50 to 200. 

The idea is to have one main catalog with all the products. Since some of the clients customers buy only specific goups I will have to male small catalogs/brochures with total of, let's say, 500 to 1000 products.

My clients has all the data in excele table. I was wondering of there is some way/add-on/extension or some other way to design tables in InDesign/Illustrator with same values (product number/picture/size...) as my client has in excel so I can "auto import" data.  Furthermore, every category is changing every few months (adding lets say new sizes, removing some other). Because of that I'll need to update all the POS and was wondering if there is some solution to make my life easier rather than making POS from scratch every few months.

Thank you all in advance!