Data Integrity and Synchronisation
Start date: November 2003
Target completion: April 2004
Project status: Completed
Background
At the heart of many current issues in the supply chain is the quality and consistency of data passed between trading partners. Data Synchronisation of accurate data has therefore become a requirement for ongoing, scalable trading partner collaboration.
Data integrity and synchronisation requires the establishment of common data standards to enable electronic communication between trading partners. Fortunately, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) has been working on this for much of the past year and has begun publishing these standards in many grocery categories.
Data integrity and synchronisation also requires the establishment of a data registry or “pool” that can be accessed by trading partners. Also fortunately, a number of key Australasian industry players (including the major retailers) have publicly stated their support of EANnet as being the single Trans-Tasman data registry.
IBM has completed considerable work in this area in both North America and Europe and now will work with the Australasian grocery industry to define best practices and an implementation roadmap for local manufacturers and retailers.
Scope and objectives
The key objective of the project would be to facilitate the achievement of data integrity and the implementation of appropriate data synchronisation within the Australasian grocery industry. The principal outputs of the project would be:
1. An assessment of the internal and external processes vs leading practices, including applicable standards and the EANnet data registry
2. An estimate of the potential benefit to the industry from improved data synchronisation
3. An implementation roadmap for data synchronisation across the industry, agreed and refined by the project team.
Project team
Board Sponsor:
Project Leader:
Project Manager: Harris Boulton
Project consultant: IBM