Innovative Musketeers

In June 2010, the Intermarché chain (SCA PR Polska Sp. z o.o.), part of the Musketeers Group, took decisive steps to improve the process of exchanging product information with its suppliers. The fundamental change concerns the electronization of data flow through the use of a certified electronic catalog operating within the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN). The exchange of product information using a certified electronic catalog is another example, following electronic documents, of increasing the efficiency of cooperation between suppliers and retailers using global GS1 standards.

Intermarché is the first grocery and industrial supermarket chain in Poland to focus on high efficiency and quality in obtaining master data. The main goal of the project is to standardize and improve the quality of product data within the supply chain. The previous method of creating and managing product cards was labor-intensive and often caused inaccuracies and discrepancies between the data held by the parties involved in the purchasing process. Using IT solutions that create a single point of data access and reception, and additionally verify them, makes it possible to avoid these problems.

The project includes two stages: in the first, suppliers have the ability to collect and validate product data in an electronic catalog and generate product cards; in the second, product cards will be eliminated in favor of fully automatic data retrieval by the Intermarché internal system. The project is being implemented using the integrated ECOD SA2 Products solution, offered in cooperation with SA2 Worldsync Polska, a catalog service provider, and Comarch, the operator of the ECOD platform.