Inspired by the many predictions for 2012 you can find right now in the I thought to write down my own assumptions and predictions for 2012. Maybe it is a little bit unstructured but this is how it came to my mind.
I hope you will enjoy them a little bit and maybe enrich them with your own thoughts and comments!
Here we go:
1. GDSN will overcome the national Data Synchronization standards and become the real global Datasync standard
Especially in Europe Data Synchronization started long before the rise of the GDSN – and already was successfully implemented before. With the rise of the GDSN and the adoption by the large, global manufacturers the European communities were urged to build bridges from their national, proprietary data synchronization standards into the GDSN. This happened the last couple of years for example in Germany, Sweden, France, Spain and other European countries. By now many of those communities have learned that using one single, global standard is really beneficial and therefore they are in the process of switching from their national, proprietary program to the global GDSN. One good example here is the German community which has decided to switch from their former SINFOS standard to the GDSN. This initiative is led by GS1 Germany and backed by all major players in the German retail marketplace.
2. Master Data Management also gets implemented by European retailers
My observation is that MDM as a discipline was for quite some time much more adopted by US retailers than in European retailers. Therefore European retailers had much more difficulties in adopting automated data synchronization and getting rid of paper or email based new item forms and the manual processes attached to it.
What I am seeing now is that meanwhile also many European retailers are looking into MDM as a discipline or a business process and that many of them really have already started their MDM program or are at least right now preparing to start one.
3. Retailers build their own portals to gather item master data on top of GDSN to have a free solution for suppliers and to collect data beyond the standards – and this will burst the usage of GDSN
GDSN on its own is not sufficient for retailers. The goal for retailers regarding data synchronization is to get the data of ALL their suppliers in a reasonable time frame electronically in an automated process instead of getting only a part of it through data synchronization and sticking with the rest to manual processes.
To overcome the chicken and egg problem (“only a ‘small’ amount of suppliers are doing GDSN, therefore retailers are not implementing GDSN” versus “retailers are not implementing GDSN and therefore suppliers are not participating in the GDSN”) retailers are more and more implementing their own web portals where suppliers can maintain their item data manually at no charge additionally to implementing GDSN. By offering a free option to suppliers retailers really can mandate electronic delivery of item data – either via GDSN or via their own portal.
Why this will burst the usage of GDSN? Because retailers are implementing GDSN and suppliers are only getting any benefits from electronic delivery of item data if they implement GDSN themselves instead of manually feeding the retailer portals.
4. E-Commerce in Europe becomes the driver for MDM and GDSN in retailers
E-Commerce is THE driver for electronic product information par excellence. This is how suppliers can advertise and promote their products and directly impact their sales through the different online channels.
Electronic product information is the equivalent to the packaging in the store!
To manage the product information on the supplier and the retailer side you absolutely need to implement MDM for product information otherwise you will not be able to control the data.
But why will it also drive the adoption of GDSN? GDSN is an established infrastructure between suppliers and retailers to exchange product information and absolutely capable to exchange the more sales oriented product information for E-Commerce also. Why try to establish something else?
5. B2C item information will become integral part of GDSN
As E-Commerce is one of the key drivers sales oriented product information (aka ‘B2C item information’) has to become integral part of GDSN.
Do we need ‘Modular Item’ for this? Probably not short term, because we could easily live with some more extensions or even with using the ‘Specifics Technical Characteristics’ Extension.
Key is to regard GDSN as the means to receive “trusted data” from suppliers.
Btw. what is your understanding of “B2C data”? Mine is all data on a product that comes from the business and the targeted audience is the consumer. This includes all product feature information, every kind of marketing information, manufacturers images and such stuff. It excludes explicitly all kind of consumer generated content (e.g. recommendations) or 3rd party content (e.g. test reports etc.).
6. Stationary retailers will learn from Amazon that the electronic supply-chain is key for success
Working a lot for stationary retailers, my observation is, that those retailers have a lot challenges to adopt electronic processes for their key business processes. Mainly because they have well established (manual) processes and their business is up and running. It is obviously a huge change task (mental wise but also just from the huge amount of employees impacted) for them to switch from the manual processes which are working for decades to automated, electronic processes.
But as Amazon meanwhile is very well established globally and is competing more and more with stationary retailers, the latter ones have to really investigate how they can stay competitive. Full adaption of the electronic supply-chain is one of the must haves.
7. The GS1 system demands an integrated solution for supplier data, item master data and transactional data
You implement GDSN and then you are going to start your first rollout / onboarding program. And you will have your first failure because you learn that your supplier address data is too poor. This can be repaired with a huge manual effort (contact each and every supplier and collect their GLN, the correct contact person and probably some more address information).
But why is there no viable GS1 solution which provides supplier address information to retailers?
Each and every retailer has the same challenges here. By the way suppliers have similar problems because where can they get all the DC and store addresses from retailers?
As a retailer you first need correct supplier information, then you need the item information and based on that you want to do the electronic business processes like orders, invoices, etc.
Why is there no integrated solution for this?
Will this solution emerge in 2012? Probably not. But the more the GDSN is used the more people will recognize that there are some other puzzle pieces still missing.
8. Gepir will be abandoned
I have to admit – I am not seriously predicting that this service will be shut down. But I still have not got the intention of the Gepir service. You could think that it is a wonderful service where you can find for each and every GLN and GTIN GS1 has ever issued some detail information.
But the data quality there is even worse than what I have seen at most retailers databases. And this just does not help.
From my perspective one of the key issues is the way how GLN’s and GTIN’s are distributed / sold where it is not mandatory to give a feedback what you are using a GLN or GTIN for.
9. GDSN at the tipping point - Not for profit vs. commercial services
The two largest GDSN datapools are meanwhile owned by the two largest GS1 organizations (SA2 Worldsync by GS1 Germany and 1sync by GS1 US). Many smaller GS1 organizations are offering also GDSN services to their community either based on 3rd party technology (many use either SA2 Worldsync or 1sync) or based on their own developments (e.g. GS1 Sweden or GS1 Hungary).
Where are the commercial players in the GDSN area? They are either bought by GS1’s (1sync was formerly Transora which was a commercial company, SA2 Worldsync was majority owned by Pironet NDH, a public company) or they are stepping slowly out of this business like GXS for example. In US there are still some commercial companies engaged in the GDSN market and there are also new players arising like lately FSEnet and others.
What does that mean for 2012? It will be very interesting to see how “not for profit” vs. “commercial” performs.
Regarding an integrated GS1 platform as described above I would think that commercial vendors are in a better position because GS1 in certain areas has to be sensitive to not make to much competition to their own solution providers. For example GS1 probably will not be willing to enter the field of transactional data (EDI) because there are well established, commercial offerings available.
So 2012 will become very interesting in the areas of MDM and GDSN!
Happy New Year!
First, I'd like to make a clarification: GXS is NOT exiting the data pool market. The GDSN continues to evolve, and GXS is an active participant in standards definition, as well as supporting various data pools around the world.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, I think you raise some interesting points and it will be important to observe how things develop this year. MDM should be a critical focus for any organization. I agree that both e-commerce and B2C are important areas and can help to drive GDSN growth, I hope the community agrees. I also hope that companies find a way to integrate their back office systems to truly automate the GDSN process so that they can receive the maximum benefits, especially suppliers.
Hi auntmel, great to hear that GXS is still actively involved in the GDSN and apologies if my perception was wrong. I think the "commercials" are key to make GDSN a success.
ReplyDeleteBjörn
Highly interesting to find a blog with such deep knowledge about the GS1 and the standards they are offering the market, such as GDSN and DQMS. We are a swedish company that has offered a internet-based mediasystem for the swedish retail- and pharmacy industry for more then 10 years. The systems contains images and product information for use in printing, space management, e-commerce etc. We are what you in your text reference as a commercial system. The big question is however, is there any not for profit systems? In Sweden we have the not for profit system GS1 Sweden, who to be able to make money formed the company Validoo AB. In practice that gives the result that they speak to the suppliers with mandate from GS1 Sweden but charges them from Validoo AB. How can we as a commercial company compete against that kind of "Not-for-profit" constellation??
ReplyDeleteThank you for your compliments ;-)
ReplyDeleteActually the competition not-for-profit vs. for-profit is a very interesting topic. What I have seen in many markets is that commercially driven companies are better in servicing their customers because they are listening to their customers and try to find, build and sell solutions to their customers and provide whatever service is needed by the customer to really solve their problems.
In a large scale you can see this in the US market which is quite mature in their GDSN adoption. And also GS1 US and 1sync might be considered the dominant and not-for-profit player in this market, there are lots of service providers around 1sync who are actually helping companies to get enabled for GDSN. And there are even real competitors to 1sync like for example FSEnet who are making quite some good business.
What I cannot judge is whether a small market like the swedish does follow the same rules as the large US market. Here it might be much more difficult to compete.
Hi Björn, great blog. I would disagree with prediction Nr. 5, B2C item information will become integral part of GDSN
ReplyDeleteI just do not see that yet, GS1 is a rookie in dealing with B2C data. Especially the process set-up to define the standard lacks the necessary dynamics to deal with the extremely short lived data demands of the consumer. The companies currently engaged in providing consumer data are not (yet) part of the GSMP process to define the standards for B2C data exchange via the GDSN so I believe it will either take another one or two years until we see significant action there of best practise will provide examples that are adopted by GS1 in shaping the standard.
Hi Big Daddy, great comment! And I absolutly agree. What I see is that there is a great demand for B2C data in retail. And GDSN from my perspective is quite a good infrastructure to exchange data between suppliers and retailers. But as you are pointing out, the GSMP process for getting B2C stuff into standards is by far too slow - and by far too extensive. So the actual challenge from my perspective is the standardisation process plus getting this into production.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do not see that there is somebody really working on this problems. Just building new B2C infrastructure (like aggregators and things like this) does not tackle the right problem.
But what is the alternative?
Good question, like you a see a clear demand for B2C data within the retail community, therefore I expect some companies to enter the market an fill the gap. There are already some product catalogue offers available that carry more than 20 Mio items (compare to GDSN 8Mio) and more consumer focused attributes. I believe if this development continues, we will see a best practise establishing itself as de facto standard
ReplyDeleteWhat product catalogues do you have in mind?
ReplyDeleteThe issues I have with cnet and the like is that the data is not really coming directly from suppliers therefor the quality is not really reliable.
Regarding the defacto standard I do agree with you. A service which would offer more B2C data including the B2B data would really put a threat on GDSN.
And looking into countries where GDSN has not yet gained any tracktion that is typically because there is an alternative available.