Jaundiced” suppliers seek direction on data synchronisation

A group of 'early adopter' food manufacturers have started uploading product data into the new GS1 UK data pool as part of an industry drive to tackle bad data in the supply chain.

The data pool is one of a series of giant electronic catalogues describing products in a standardised way that form part of the new global data synchronisation network (GDSN).

Although many manufacturers were still confused about how to participate in the GDSN, awareness was slowly growing, said Alaster Purchase, a business manager at GS1 UK, the supply chain standards body.

“The UK data pool has only been up and running for a few weeks, and we already have 250 UK-based manufacturers starting to upload data into it and exchanging it with their trading partners, so it's not a bad start. But it's a big job. To gain real benefits, many companies need to clean up data within their own systems first.”

He added: “Tesco is implementing new software to handle data synchronisation and will not start exchanging standardised product data with suppliers until September. But Asda and Makro are already doing it.”

However, multi-enterprise collaboration firm Sterling Commerce, which has been working with several food manufacturers including Cadbury, said many suppliers were “feeling a bit jaundiced over the whole GDSN issue”

Marketing manager David Hogg said: “A few years ago, manufacturers supplying Tesco and Sainsbury were told they had to supply product data via a proprietary data cleansing service called Udex, which was a painful process for some manufacturers with large product ranges and strong branding. Now they are being advised to use the new UK data pool.

“Technically, they should be able to exchange data with all of their customers via this data pool, but there is a lot of uncertainty as to whether this is actually the case right now. What they don't want to do is pay to subscribe to multiple catalogues or data cleansing services to keep all of their customers happy.” Meanwhile, retailers were not providing clear guidance, he added.

“We have talked to large manufacturers that have received letters from Tesco and Asda saying they need to get to grips with GDSN, but they don't explain how it will work in practice.”