Effectively bringing products to market in isolation from the flow of information between a supplier and their trading partners is practically impossible.
Errors in GTIN numbers, dimensions, weights, and other parameters describing a product, as well as outdated data, cause disruptions in purchasing processes, logistics, warehousing, inventory management, financial settlements, or sales and customer service. Research conducted in the UK shows that 80% of product information in retail chains is inconsistent with the data held in manufacturers’ databases.
In Poland, internal “Excel” product sheets are used to exchange product information with retail chains, which differ from one another in terms of information content, data format, and layout, which poses a significant difficulty in their preparation. An alternative is for retail chains to use a common sheet template, such as CPC, which fully meets the needs of the Polish market and is compliant with GS1 standards. A supplier will be able to send the same data to multiple recipients using the GDSN network.
The quality of product data is evidenced by its completeness, consistency, accuracy, timeliness, and compliance with standards. It is from suppliers that the market expects high-quality data. It is difficult to meet this when a number of activities (data collection, filling out and sending sheets, as well as verification, supplementing, and entering data into the recipient’s internal system) are performed manually, which results in many errors.
Low data quality causes additional costs and losses related to:
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data verification and correction
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disruptions in deliveries and product availability on shelves
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additional arrangements in the areas of orders and financial settlements.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 6/2011.