For food brands and suppliers, managing and delivering GDSN data can be a real headache.
The Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) is an important tool for sharing product information with retailers and other trading partners. But the process of managing and delivering GDSN data is complex and time-consuming.
The good news is that managing your critical GDSN data doesn’t have to be a tedious burden to help simplify the process and take the stress out of GDSN delivery.
GDSN for food brands: what you need to know
The GDSN is a worldwide web of GDSN data pools that empowers companies to seamlessly exchange product information with their business partners in a standardized format. For many brands with food and/or beverage items in their catalog, GDSN data is the linchpin in ensuring those products are consistently and accurately portrayed on retailer websites, store shelves, and distributor catalogs. By delivering comprehensive, high-quality product data, food brands can elevate their visibility, bolster customer confidence, and ultimately boost sales.
Beyond its function in product representation, GDSN data is a key component for streamlining supply chain operations and cost reduction. By harmonizing product data throughout the supply chain, GDSN facilitates swifter and more precise order fulfillment, mitigates the risk of inaccuracies, and empowers smarter inventory management. This, in turn, leads to cost efficiencies and enhanced operational productivity for food brands.
Uses and challenges of GDSN data
Efficiency is the name of the game in a highly competitive food industry with notoriously slim margins. Leveraging GDSN data to its maximum potential can be a game-changing way to hone internal operations and get an edge in the market.
GDSN data provides an important foundation for a “common language” for everyone involved in the food industry, from farm to factory to shelf to table. This standardization ensures that everyone interprets and uses the data the same way, reducing confusion and errors that can disrupt operations and impact product quality.
Using a GDSN data pool increases the number of retailers and trading partners with food producers can readily share product information. This expanded reach helps food companies enter new markets, reach a broader customer base, and increase sales potential.
But managing and especially sharing GDSN data can be a complex and time-consuming process, particularly for food brands with extensive product portfolios and limited resources. The volume of data and the need to meet strict requirements for every recipient can quickly become overwhelming.
Delivering GDSN data to the right place in the right way
Delivering GDSN data to a variety of retailers and recipients, each with its own unique requirements, can be a daunting task. However, with the right tools and strategies, food brands can streamline the process and ensure that their product information is accurate, consistent, and compliant.
A pivotal point in the delivery of GDSN data is the choice of a GDSN data pool with an extensive network of GDSN endpoints and recipients. A data pool serves as a centralized repository for GDSN data, facilitating the simultaneous sharing of product information across multiple retailers.
The selection of a data pool should consider the network’s size, scope, and the support and services available—the more endpoints available, the more likely you’ll be able to immediately send data to your desired partners and easily add new ones as you scale and grow.
Read More: How Utz Streamlined GDSN Data Delivery
Success Story
Utz Quality Foods Expands Their Network while Spicing up Their Product Information
The importance of unique requirement sets
One of the most common and frustrating GDSN-related obstacles food suppliers run into is incomplete or incorrect data delivery to their seller partners. Every retailer, distributor, app or other endpoint ingests and uses product content in its own unique way, and if GDSN data isn’t delivered in just the right format and manner it can get rejected or ignite a tedious and complicated back-and-forth between supplier and recipient.
This is extremely common; some major GDSN syndication solutions are only able to achieve complete data delivery to major food service recipients about 70% of the time. When speed and efficiency are everything, that can quickly grind you to a painful halt that requires intensive manual intervention.
This happens in part because some syndication solutions rely on generic one-size-fits all delivery methods that put the work and responsibility of customizing and tailoring data on the supplier.
When choosing a product content syndication solution, you can save time and effort by finding a tool that customizes and transforms your data with unique requirement sets that tailor it for every endpoint. For comparison, Syndigo has over 800 unique GDSN requirement sets, which is why our data reaches food service recipients completely with a 90% success rate.
Find efficiency by combining GDSN syndication with other product content delivery
GDSN data is an invaluable and near-universal foundation of product information. But by some standards it is somewhat basic and limited.
Today’s customers, whether they’re end consumers at store shelves or food service providers like restaurants, are increasingly demanding more product content to inform their purchase decisions. Suppliers have met the demand by enriching or ‘topping off’ GDSN data with supplementary information and media, adding Core images and marketing copy like feature bullets, or even creating rich interactive digital experiences for their product pages with Enhanced Content.
All these product content formats are quickly becoming must-haves to ensure your products can stand out on shelves of any kind and keep your brand top of mind. Even if you only create and deliver GDSN data today, other kinds of product content might be a priority in the near future.
To keep processes and operations as simple as possible and prepare your organization to scale smoothly into the future, look for solutions that can equip your brand to generate, manage, optimize and syndicate all kinds of product data from a single interface.
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