Blog
October 3, 2022
For more than 15 years, there has been talk of digitization in the retail sector, but not much has happened. The ANWR-GARANT SWISS AG retail congress set out to change this with clear areas of action and orientation for a future-oriented digitization strategy. As experts in automated product creation and processing, our CEO Bernhard Bicher was among those invited to speak.
Essentially, four problem areas were identified that are responsible for the shortcomings in many digital retail processes. On the one hand, investment in digitalization is half-hearted because no one in the company knows exactly what to do. On the other hand, owner-managed retail structures need to work together, but unfortunately they usually do not. This in turn means that best practices and synergies that could have a positive impact on a company’s market position are not being exploited. Furthermore, “quick fixes,” i.e., platform solutions, are being implemented without thoroughly checking whether they are a good fit. Instead, these implementations need to be viewed more holistically, with a strong focus on whether these solutions are scalable and future-proof.
Digital readiness: Products without accurate data are incomplete and flawed.
Without suppliers, trade cannot function. Today’s retailers must clearly focus on brands and product groups that ensure profitability and market relevance. This includes processes and service providers that consider efficiency, sustainability, and visibility to be relevant and important. After all, the new reality of trade requires suppliers who are just as digitally savvy as retailers. Product data and the quality of product data play a central role in this.
The importance of enriched product data is undisputed in the e-commerce sector and is also gaining increasing attention in brick-and-mortar retail. Only those who can consistently and quickly deliver the right data in the correct quality from their own systems to the various sales channels will remain relevant in the market in the future. But what does optimal product creation and preparation look like? How can suppliers ensure that they provide the right product data?
Today, the Onedot product data platform ensures optimal preparation of product data for many retailers. It automates the data preparation and maintenance process and ensures that product data quality is continuously adequate and correct in the selected systems. This also includes ensuring that different data sources can be properly accessed. This is another reason why suppliers do not have to fill out templates, but can provide the data in their own format. The Onedot product data platform then automatically creates the articles and spreads them out according to a clearly defined process. This ensures that the product data quality always corresponds to the models specified by the retailer. It is these processes that form the basis for procurement and thus also have a significant influence on marketability.
Do retailers and suppliers speak the same language?
Products that do not meet the required quality standards are unusable in today’s world. But what is the best way to present product data? How can we ensure that retailers and suppliers speak the same language? Standards are an important approach to this issue. In the sporting goods trade, this is the FEDAS product group code.
This is intended to harmonize the international sports market in terms of data and its structure, which will have a positive effect on digital data exchange. With FEDAS, retailers have the opportunity to access a uniform database and perform analyses across different manufacturers (regardless of the EAN). The FEDAS product code thus represents a common language that applies to the entire sports industry and therefore offers many advantages and opportunities regardless of the systems used.
Standards offer many advantages, which is why the Onedot product data platform supports them. However, as things stand today, not all desired descriptions are always included in standards or correctly represented. The reality for many retailers is that sufficient product data is available, but in a wide variety of formats, qualities, and forms. Automated article creation offers the possibility of harmonizing product data that does not yet follow any standard.
Are you unsure whether your data has the right level of digitization? We would be happy to advise you and check your product data.