Commentary by Bill Bittner, President, BWH Consulting
One of the nice things about attending conferences like UConnect is that they give you an opportunity to reflect on the technology requirements of a particular business model. UConnect is conducted by GS1-US, formerly known as the Uniform Code Council. They maintain standards for Identification (Bar Codes and RFID), Communications (EDI), and Business Processes (Rosetta Net and VICS). Data Synchronization was a big theme at this conference and it inspired this thought.
Retail Applications, especially Consumer Package Goods Applications, are built on a foundation that consists of four legs.
- Software provides the applications themselves and the control mechanisms necessary to interface the applications with each other, the hardware, and the internet.
- Hardware or Infrastructure is the second leg, which provides the processing power, storage, and physical connections that interface a particular installation with the outside world.
- Leg three is the transaction data that is generated as the business operates. These are the POS transactions, time card entries, and inventory movement transactions that are constantly collected by the various applications.
- The last leg is the "Master Data".
Master Data is really what Data Synchronization is all about. Everyone realizes that it does not make sense for hundreds of retailers to measure a can of Del Monte Peas when they are all the same. Instead, the manufacturer should tell everyone in the supply chain the measurements. The challenge is that this is the classic "necessary vs. sufficient" situation they taught in elementary logic classes.
The data provided by the manufacturers is necessary, but additional data about the item is also necessary to have sufficient information to sell it. This includes POS descriptions unique to hardware vendor, tax codes, food stamps, etc. The answer up to now has been for individual retailers to build proprietary portals for capturing the additional data. Manufacturers are forced to log into various systems to complete the new item data.
Moderator's Comment: Is there an alternative to having each retailer define their own portal? Is there a way the necessary retail data could be captured once and shared?
Not all master data is the same. Personnel data is unique to the individuals employed by a certain company. But for retail, a large amount of master data is the same across organizations. Except for private label merchandise, retailers could share all the same data about consumer package goods. A service that provided this information would be a big help to the small and medium size retailers because it would save them the effort involved with gathering, verifying, and entering master item data. It might even make more applications feasible for these organizations. I really think there is an opportunity here. - Bill Bittner - Moderator