Easy Synchronization

Over the past twelve months, there has been a noticeable shift in data sync. Across the board, retailers and distributors are measuring and monitoring the accuracy, timeliness and completeness of the product data, that manufacturers / suppliers are providing via GDSN.

That in turn has led to a second significant trend – manufacturers / suppliers are having to really respond to ensure that their GDSN data is complete, accurate, that existing items are back filled, and that new listings are published and successfully synchronized with their trading partners.

This edition of the newsletter highlights some of the retailer / distributor initiatives and the how the features in Sync/PDI can help you stay on top.

Wal-Mart recently announced that they will begin to measure and scorecard suppliers on the quality of their GDSN data. Wal-Mart will measure discrepancies between the values provided by the supplier via GDSN and the values that Wal-Mart has in their system or determines from their own measurements.

This initiative extends the validation that Wal-Mart had been performing in matching GTINs and packaging hierarchy quantities to now comparing supplier’s values to Wal-Mart’s values for data attributes such as dimensions and weights.

Several large manufacturing organizations recently shared their success stories in implementing data quality practices.  These organizations described the processes and procedures that they put in place to ensure that the data they communicate via GDSN meets the data quality expectations of their trading partners.

An initial step that several manufacturers took to gain executive sponsorship was to undertake a quick assessment of the quality of product data that they were providing their Trading Partners. The universal finding of these quick assessments was eye-opening – the data was meeting neither internal needs nor trading partner needs.  This lack of data quality was then causing re-work which frequently ended up taking Sales and Buyers time to resolve – time that then wasn’t available for increasing revenue.

Lowe’s recently announced a campaign both on data quality and timeliness. As part of this campaign, Lowe’s wants to ensure that suppliers are monitoring the GDSN messages that Lowe’s sends to suppliers.

Lowe’s is using the Global Data Sync network to inform suppliers whether Lowe’s has accepted the supplier’s items within the Lowe’s Item Setup process or whether Lowe’s has an issue with data and needs the supplier to make a correction before the new items can be listed and initial PO’s created.

As Lowe’s and other Retailers/Distributors ramp up their use of GDSN messages to return status information to suppliers, more Sync/PDI users are learning the features that are available to help.

Sync/PDI generates email alerts whenever your trading partner sends you GDSN messages. This makes it easy to know about Lowe’s and other partner messages right away without having to sign-in to Sync/PDI.

Dot Foods was the first foodservice distributor in production with GDSN and they continue to lead the way by aggressively expanding the number of suppliers engaged with GDSN. Dot Foods is utilizing Sync/PDI for Distributors to accelerate their implementation and realize benefits from GDSN.

Dot Foods has implemented a comprehensive data sync initiative that covers new items, item changes and the initial synchronization / alignment of existing data. As part of their implementation, Dot Foods is auditing suppliers’ data against Dot Foods’ item file and reporting the results back to the supplier for verification.