- What is the current focus of your company's business?
Hogan - We are continuing to focus on our traditional roles: barcode, and e-Commerce as well as more recent initiatives in GDSN and EPCglobal. Our concentration is in refining how we can help the community implement e-Commerce more easily,. While a lot has changed, many things have not. We are continuing to work with trading partners in the US marketplace, we have some hot new initiatives, and continue to move forward with our core activities. We continue to see growth in areas like barcode and EDI, and we are being approached by other industry sectors all the time.
A big part of the focus has been pushing ourselves to make more contact with the 98% of our customer base that is not as directly involved with us. We continue to better define how to engage with the small to mid-sized enterprises, and give them a road map. They need information on barcoding and effective migration strategies as they grow their businesses.
We have created some tools to address those areas. Most notably our Data Driver tool. This tool was launched in 2005 . Today, we are happy to report that 50% of our new members use the Data Driver. Historically, companies wanting to implement barcoding would simply ask for the standards manual and work on their own. That left a lot of people guessing and asking a lot of questions. Data Driver lets them enter their product information and dimensions, then apply best practices to create the necessary barcode and application techniques. From there, the information can be taken to a printing company for printing. This gets them accustomed to capturing data attributes, and starts them thinking about them. It also positions them for the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) and e-Commerce.
- How has this focus changed in the last 2 years?
Hogan - In the last two years we went through the name and organizational change with EAN, and that's gone extremely well. We have two big initiatives around GDSN and Electronic Product Code (EPC) technology.
GDSN is now in its 6th year. People have a good grasp of the importance of the GDSN and realize there are not a lot of alternatives. More retailers are getting onboard, and that means more suppliers as well. Our acceptance in other markets is growing, and that is driving interest across different industry segments.
The challenge we are addressing is how to share information beyond the basic transaction that supports commerce. Handling that additional data within an EDI transaction has shortcomings.
Rosenberg - Internet and XML technology are gaining ground. EDI was designed to handle specific business documents. What is changing is a focus toward enabling the business processes between trading partners.. GDSN standardizes the data, making life simpler for suppliers.
Hogan - EPC is about two years old now, and still in its early stages. But some of the reports from the industry (Wal-Mart, the Department of Defense, Gillette) are compelling. They have gone beyond pilots and are now sharing data. It's not the end state yet, but it's encouraging.
EPC provides visibility between transactions. For example, a manufacturer sends an ASN telling the customer the product has been shipped, but EPC goes beyond the ASN and makes available information about what actually shipped, and then responds when the retailer receives the goods. Today, trading partners may accept the ASN as the truth or the invoice as the truth, but there is lots of inconsistency. With EPC, the retailer gets constant reading of information, and can deal with out of stock and inventory reconciliation.
What we are attempting to do is shift from push to pull. EDI is push technology. EPC is available on demand and can provide more information. It is not practical to move the volume of data used in EPC using traditional EDI methods. Thought leaders want to get to a query/response mechanism where one trading partner can query another. The end result will likely take many years to achieve.
- What are your current initiatives?
Hogan - We want to become a much broader community than we are now. Within GDSN and EPC we are looking at on-boarding tools, training, and knowledge.
Rosenberg - Today we run conferences twice a year, for a week, to work on the enhanced business processes. We talk about processes and models, XML messages, datacom, and testing performance. GS1 US looks at the supply chain holistically and incorporates newer technologies as they become available. We focus on our members and the supply chain, with an eye toward reducing costs and expansion across industries.
We have created implementation guidelines for EDI, and we discovered that guidelines are not enough. Companies needed implementation assistance. When we looked at how we could do that, we realized we needed to engage solution partners to assist in getting the community active and involved in the enhanced processes.
- How has the market for EDI changed with the impact of the Internet?
As a standards organization, the growing use of portals is of some concern. We see a growing trend toward portal technology and feel that this is a move away from standards.
As a standards organization, the growing use of portals is of some concern. We see a growing trend toward portal technology and feel that this is a move away from standards. - What are the greatest challenges for your customers?
Hogan - Getting our customers to talk about the business value they are getting from our initiatives. There is only so much we can do in that regard, but when peers offer business cases about their use of services and standards, our initiatives become more visible. The more they hear at that level, the more they understand.
- What is your stance on the eC-BP organization and tenets? Hogan - We believe that any organization that is reaching out to better the industry is a good thing. The eC-BP is very complimentary to our mission.