MDM and GDSN: Hard to connect? The design flaw in GDSN …

Did you ever look for a MDM or a PIM system with a GDSN connector certified by GS1?

If you did I am pretty sure that you have not found any. Why? Because the whole GDSN standardization is only meant for and certified for the communication between data pools.
The communication between the suppliers and retailers and their data pools is not standardized at all.

You do not believe that?

Look at GS1's Interoperability and Certification document. It explicitly reads “GDSN was not intended to govern DP-to -Trading Partner activity. “ (see chapter 4 at the end). There is even no recommendation what type of message format and standard should be used for communication.

And what is the datapool reality?

Some datapools promote GS1 XML for the data pool to trading partner communication, some promote PRICAT based data formats and a third group even promotes their own proprietary XML format.

What does that mean?

1. Switching data pools is quite a challenge because typically you have to reimplement your communication  to the datapool.
2. Independent software vendors do not have a reliable interface which they can implement and which would allow them to connect to any data pool.

This explains why each data pool has to certify every software manufacturer on his own and why every software vendor has to implement its GDSN support individually per data pool. That puts a big barrier in front of independent software manufacturers.

Although GDSN already exists for more than 7 years for example SAP MDM today is only certified for two data pools (and the implementations differ significantly) and as a second example IBM Websphere Product Center is only certified for one data pool. Customers for sure use those solutions also with other data pools. But this always needs significant implementation effort by the customer or his service provider. Having invested those efforts locks in customers to their data pool provider significantly.

Having no standard interface to implement which can be used for all GDSN data pool prevents software manufacturers to invest too heavily into providing standard solutions.

Can this be solved?

Yes . GDSN Inc. can make it mandatory that data pools also support the current version of GS1 XML (at least the GDSN subset) and AS2 as communication protocol between trading partners and their data pool. GDSN Inc. could provide a test harness consisting of a number of messages which have to be executed during the certification. That would even not add additional cost to the certification process but could even reduce certification costs.

Trading partners would not be impacted at all because GS1 XML should not replace the proprietary data formats.  But it should be the only mandatory option to give standard software providers a standard interface to GDSN data pools.

What is the impact to data pools? 

It should not be to much of an impact. Every certified GDSN data pool is already capable to process GS1 XML messages because that is what they are sending and receiving to and from other data pools. To make those protocols also available for the communication between trading partners and the data pool should be quite simple.

What would be the benefit?

Standard Software manufacturers would be able to implement only one interface and they could connect immediately to every certified GDSN data pool.
That would be really a benefit to trading partners because having standard software which has GDSN connectivity out-of-the-box would really drive down the needed implementation effort.
And this finally would be very beneficial for the whole GDSN.

So, let’s make the GDSN plug&play for trading partners!

Brand Owners loose sales due to mobile scanning!

GS1 UK released recently a report called „Mobile-savvy shopper report“. In this report they researched the impact of poor third-party app data on shopper behaviour.

You can find the report on their website http://www.gs1uk.org.

What did they do in their research?

1. They tested the data from three third-party barcode scanning apps.
   
   They have chosen the top downloaded paid for barcode scanning app, the top downloaded free barcode scanning app and the top downloaded health and fitness barcode scanning app. It is a little pity that they did not name the tested apps (although I can understand this).
    
2. They scanned 375 random grocery products and compared the product information provided by those apps to the product information which was provided by the brand owners to GS1 UK’s TrueSource Product Catalogue.


And what are their findings?

1. The very first finding and statement is that the consumer uses all means to inform himself about the products he is going to buy and that this information heavily impacts his buying decision. If he does not find any data on the product or only data that he is not trusting then in the worst case he will not buy that product.

   
   
2. Only 9% of the scanned products have correct descriptions in the third-party apps.

   
   
3. 75% of scans did return absolutely no product information at all.

   
   
4. 87% did not return any images.

   
   
5. The more data is available the higher is the percentage of wrong data (see following chart)

How would you feel as a brand owner hearing such results and also hearing everybody that mobile commerce and B2C are the next wave, which will influence shopper’s behavior radically?

You will definitely want to get control on your product information in the mobile and the internet univers!

Just out of pure interest I did a small (and not representative) research on my own. I asked for a quite mature target market the leading barcode scanning app provider who has his focus in grocery to give me the scanned GTIN’s for the first two weeks of febuary 2011.

That was impressive 3Mio scans! And they were able to provide product information for nearly 90% of their scans. Even more impressive!

And then I matched that with the product information which is available in the GDSN (do not argue that this is not possible because recipient data pools do not store the data – for some target markets life is different ;-).

You can imagine what comes now? The matching rate was significantly, very significantly lower than what the app guys had :-/

So what is my conclusion?

1. For the consumer the 3rd party barcode scanning apps are great – you have all the data you need for your buying decision on your fingertips. The data is bad? Then the product must be bad and the consumer will not buy it.

   
   
2. From a brand owners perspective the data that is available in 3rd party barcode scanning apps is very, very poor.

   
   
3. Brand owners are really not yet taking care of their product information. Even in the GDSN until now you only can find a fraction of the data consumers are looking for. And that is NOT because of that the standards are behind and attributes are missing but it is just because the industry does not take care of their data.

Finally, could you imagine why the industry does not take care of their data? I am very convinced that many manufacturers are just not capable to do so, because – and here comes my mantra - they just have not yet launched a serious MDM program.

Manufacturers – Take control of your data! Launch a MDM program! Provide the data through the GDSN to those platforms! The consumer is already there!