WEGMANS LAUNCHES SUPPLIER DATA AUDIT

Julie Gallagher

SAN FRANCISCO -- Addressing concerns about the accuracy of manufacturers' product data, the Uniform Code Council is setting up an audit on behalf of Wegmans Food Markets to compare physical product attributes with information contained in the new Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN).

The audit, currently being piloted with 23 Wegmans suppliers, was announced by Marianne Timmons, business-to-business director, Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans, at Food Marketing Institute's Distribution Conference, held here at the Omni Hotel March 13 to 16.

"It is our hope that other retailers will participate as we roll this out," she said. "For the purposes of supplier simplicity, we hope this can be the one lab to provide this service to the industry in the U.S."

Wegmans, one of the leaders in data synchronization in the food retail industry, plans to begin a similar audit program with the rest of its grocery warehouse suppliers this summer, she added.

Timmons spent the bulk of her presentation explaining that the need for such an audit lab stems from Wegmans' own experience with inaccurate manufacturer data -- even though the data has been synchronized via GDSN.

GDSN is a new standards-based global network for synchronizing product data between trading partners, managed under the auspices of UCC, Lawrenceville, N.J., and EAN International, Brussels, Belgium.

"The quality of the data in the network is only as good or bad as the quality of the information put into the network by manufacturers," she said. "Synchronization does not inherently clean dirty data. It is only a mechanism to share information."

Wegmans learned that the biggest data accuracy challenges for manufacturers involve measurements, including case width, depth and weight. Item measurements have also been a challenge. "One supplier tried to synchronize information relating to a five-foot bottle of shampoo," she said.

Accuracy issues not only caught Wegmans by surprise, but its vendors as well. "Suppliers are surprised that they can have synchronized item data that is not accurate," she said. "Data synchronization doesn't equal accuracy."

After creating greater awareness of the issue with its suppliers, Wegmans has improved its accuracy rates. This year, the retailer performed an audit of 1,300 items provided by 23 suppliers whom Timmons described as forward-thinking leaders who are knowledgeable about data synchronization.

"We audited all data that can be physically validated and sent the physical cases to a third-party lab," said Timmons. "They audited everything they could," including dimensional information and GTIN/UPC.

Thirty-five percent of the synchronized information relating to the items was accurate. "We went from a 12% to 35% accuracy rate within the span of one year," said Timmons.

To date, 755 Wegmans suppliers have synchronized the data attributes for at least one item with the retailer via GDSN, of which 230 have synchronized all of their product data, according to Timmons.

Nonetheless, she added, "as more and more [synchronized] data came in, the amount of time our people spent double-checking [physical] attributes of products increased because they wanted to make sure the data was right. We learned along the way that the data wasn't right."

Wegmans' accuracy concerns initially prompted three audits that took place last year.

During the first audit, "we picked 27 cases at random out of the warehouse just to see what was going on," she said. "The results weren't good. None of the [synchronized] items had completely accurate data."

Wegmans' next audit involved 54 cases selected at random across multiple manufacturers. "The results weren't much better," acknowledged Timmons, who did not provide specific details.

Wegmans' third audit took place late last summer with 250 cases. The retailer found that only 12% of the items had completely accurate dimensional data.

"We decided that in 2005 we'd need to fix the data accuracy issue," said Timmons, adding that it's a dynamic, rather than static problem. "Some suppliers had really [accurate] data to begin with, but if you don't have the really good business processes [data quality] erodes over time."

Timmons conveyed other data synchronization best practices to the audience, including tapping into internal experts. "We've got more than 70 people from our organization together and asked them, 'What does bad data cause you to have to do,"' said Timmons. "They lit up at the opportunity to share their experiences. We were able to take those examples and review where our processes are really broken."

She also encouraged retailers not to lose of sight of the ultimate goal when striving for data synchronization.

"We're changing our world here and it's not going to happen quickly so find ways to celebrate the small things but keep in mind that this is a huge effort," she said.