Visiting the neighborhood supermarket on weekends to shop for groceries has become a weekly occurrence for most working people. We all know buying food everyone in the family likes can be a difficult task. I normally have a lot to purchase during these visits because my wife and I have different kinds of breakfast. I am a person who loves the full English breakfast while my wife prefers the delicacies of Indian cuisine.
The Grocery List
Listing our shopping items is a simple process carried out easily in our minds and through conversations. However, for companies that produce the items we buy at the supermarket, maintaining product catalogs is more complex and difficult. Each product is made up of ingredients vital to the nutritional value, flavor, and aroma of the product. For my frosted flakes with honey and almonds to taste perfect and be marketed with the right labels, companies use a data management system to ensure that the right ingredients go into the right products at the right time. Consolidation of information about core products and optimizing product information workflows, increases operational efficiency by providing people and systems in the company with a single source of accurate and consistent product information.
Lion, a leading beverage and food company in Australia and New Zealand, with a portfolio of market-leading, household-name brands in beer, spirits, wine, milk, fresh dairy foods, juice, cheese and soy beverages, did exactly this – implementing a master data management (MDM) solution. Lion created the right balance of product lifecycle management (PLM) and master data management capabilities. Besides product data, other master data such as vendors and customers, multiple inter-related catalogs, complex hierarchies, and data integrity across all catalogs were accurately maintained.
An Easy Checkout
With the help of MDM, Lion streamlined new product development and change processes, reducing the process from 60 steps to approximately a dozen steps. An MDM solution enabled Lion to facilitate compliance with GS1 standards, allowing it to seamlessly exchange electronic product and shipment information with major customers. These benefits play a major role in the expansion plans of Lion.
We can only be overwhelmed by the importance of GS1 compliance, when we realize that our favorite brand of sea salt with cracked pepper chips is available in the store because GS1 compliance enabled quicker delivery of the product across the supply chain from the manufacturer to the store. Next time you go to the supermarket, reflect and wonder at the technology that makes shopping for your desired products convenient and satisfying.
