Easy Synchronization

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.

In the normal flow of GDSN, Lowe’s will return GDSN messages indicating the status of the item within Lowe’s new item setup process:

• ACCEPTED – Lowe’s has received the GDSN data for the item and it has passed initial validations

• REVIEW – Lowe’s is asking the supplier to review and correct GDSN data for the item

• SYNCHRONIZED – Lowe’s is now using GDSN to maintain the data for the item.

The key is that suppliers need to watch and address all “REVIEW” messages and monitor that items reach the “SYNCHRONIZED” status within an appropriate timeframe.  

Sync/PDI has several features to allow suppliers to easily monitor Retailer/Distributor responses as explained in the next story.

This focus on the GDSN response messages is good for Lowe’s and suppliers. For Lowe’s, they can quickly communicate product status information to suppliers without email or “telephone tag”. Suppliers gain not only from the same benefits but from using a standard approach that can be used with all Trading Partners.