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!