GDSN: The vicious circle

On one of the last GDSN workgroup meetings we were discussing how to improve the adoption of GDSN.

One of the comments was that there is a vicious circle: Retailers say as long as there is not more item data available from suppliers they will not start to engage with GDSN. And on the same time suppliers are arguing that they will not start delivering their article data through GDSN as long as retailers are still demanding product information on paper or via excel files or similar.

How to deal with that vicious circle?

Suppliers should launch a MDM program independently from GDSN. 

Suppliers have to prepare their own product data in a central database to fulfill the different requirements they are facing today. They need the product data for their internal manufacturing processes, for their sales processes, for internal information purposes, for all kind of electronic business. Providing that data via GDSN to their retail customers is only one additional use case for their correct, complete and quality checked product information.

If they are taking GS1 standards into consideration when defining their MDM program then they will be easily able to also deploy GDSN as part of their MDM program. And as there is already so much value in their MDM program, it does not matter if in the beginning they deliver the data via GDSN only to 1 or 2 retailers. Usage of the GDSN will evolve over time.

Retailers should take the same approach. 

Just launch your MDM program and make GDSN only being one (additional) source of product data. The MDM program itself will bring so much value that it also pays already for your GDSN implementation. What is key to your MDM program is that your vision contains that you are not any longer accepting item information on paper or via email.

Cap Gemini: MDM Top IT Topic for 2011!??

In a recent study of Cap Gemini (which you can find here in german) they are identifying Master Data Management and Data Quality Management as part of the Top 5 most important IT topics mentioned by mid sized companies for 2011.

Hurray! Companies are becoming aware of their master data issues and that they have to do something around them!

But STOP! Didn't I mention that MDM is NOT an IT topic? Just compare the 10 myths regarding MDM by Gartner.

Ok, there is still some education to be done! It is great that companies are becoming aware of their MDM issues. Now they have to learn that IT cannot solve it. Business has to solve it with organisation and processes. IT has to support!

Let's build a new platform to exchange Rich Product Information!

This is what of my collegues reported back to me today. He was joining one of those new GS1 MobileCom meetings and they were discussing how they could exchange rich product information.

Just to get everybody on the same page - what is rich product information? My understanding of rich product information is that this consumer oriented information which helps the consumer to take a buying decision. Examples are for sure images, but also feature informations, nutritions, allergenes and similar stuff.

Everybody complained that today there is no standard and no platform in place where you can exchange that type of information.

And believe me there were many of the big manufacturers and retailers sitting in this room and complaining too!

If you are familiar with some of the details of the GDSN you for sure are aware that all of the above can be easily exchanged via the GDSN.

The discussion went on for a while and became more and more ridiculous and people were even suggesting to build a new platform to be able to exchange that type of data.

At one point my collegue remarked that the GDSN and even current standards would be technically capable to support the exchange of this type of rich product information but that manufacturers just were not entering that data. And then he asked one of the manufacturers who was participating  in that meeting why they were not entering that type of information into the GDSN.

The representative of that manufacturer could not answer that question! And also the rest of the audience was obviously overstrained with the question why not simply use the GDSN.

But my favorit comment during that discussion was "I just do not like the GDSN. Let us build something new.".

(And just to be clear on that - I do not want to put anybody on the spot, therefore I am not mentioning any names here)

What is my take away?

1. Building new things is more fun (at least in the beginning) than understanding and leveraging existing stuff.
2. Knowledge of people participating in such meetings often is not sufficient:
1. No Knowledge on GDSN - you need not only to understand the principles but you also have to know some details about attributes, extensions and stuff like that
2. No Knowledge on their internal organisation, processes and IT infrastructure and how they manage their product information.
3. No Knowledge on what is going on in the rest of the world.

And now? I would suggest "Let's build something new! That will be fun!" ;-)

PS: You want to know what I think why manufacturers are not putting the "richer" product information into the GDSN? Remember one of my former posts regarding "every manufacturer has a database with all his productinformation"? I just think that most of the manufacturers just do not have that data available in a form to easily send it through the GDSN ...

Retailer GDS Implementation: US vs. Europe

In the last few month I worked with couple european retailers and also with a couple of US retailers on GDSN and MDM.

My perception was that US Retailers where quite ahead of their European colleagues. Not all of them because also in US there are a lot of retailers who have not yet started any GDS Initiative nor a MDM Initiative.

But comparing the most advanced (regarding GDS and MDM implementation) retailers in Europe and in US, US seems to me to be more advanced.

What is the difference?

European retailers seem to have as their vision “I want to do GDS to receive suppliers product data electronically.”. US retailers seem to have a different vision “I want to replace my paper base product introduction and change process by an electronic process”.

You think there is no real difference in the outcome?

Wrong. It is. The goal in US is not to do GDSN but to replace paper based processes. In Europe the goal is to do GDSN and thereby hoping to replace paper based processes.

What I saw with the retailers I worked with in US was that they all launched a MDM program. This was a lot about setting up an organization and processes to manage their item master data. To receive the data from their suppliers they not only implemented GDSN but they also implemented Web portals where suppliers can manually maintain item data free of charge. This led to the comfortable situation that they could receive 100% of their product data electronically by mandating to deliver item data either via GDSN or via their Web portal.

In Europe retailers engaged heavily into community alignment and standards development (which btw. led to all those country specific requirements and standards) but only implemented GDS (and to be honest, they first all developed country specific data pools and later on tried to switch to GDSN). No free portal for their suppliers, nor – in many cases – a dedicated MDM program to ensure data quality. With only having GDS as a means to deliver item data electronically, retailers in Europe are not able to mandate the usage of GDS. In the end successful retailers in Europe might only sync item data with 10-15% of their suppliers, and with the rest of their suppliers there are still manual, often paper based processes in place.

This explains why retailers in US are typically much happier with GDSN implementation than their European counterparts although adoption of GDSN does not significantly differ in US and Europe. In both regions it is not as good as expected by all participants.

Do not get me wrong.

I am not suggesting to retailers to implement their proprietary portals just to be able to offer item maintenance for free to their suppliers. This is a functionality which today is offered typically by data pools. Those offerings are more standards compliant and should be a lot cheaper than it is for a retailer to implement it on their own.

So I would suggest to retailers who are struggling with their GDSN implementation and their realized benefits that they should define and implement a MDM program and their vision has to be to "Replace manual item listing and maintenance process by  automated data synchronisation processes".