Liliendahl on Data Quality

When working with Product Information Management (PIM) and not at least with product information exchange (product data syndication) between trading partners, I have noticed three major sectors where the requirements and means differs quite a bit.

These sectors are:

• Food, beverage at pharmaceuticals: These are highly regulated sectors where the rules for taxonomy, completeness and exchange formats are advanced. Exchange standards and underpinning services as GS1/GDSN are well penetrated at least for basic data elements among major players. This sector counts for circa 1/6 of the world trade.
• Fashion, books and mainstream electronics: The products within this sector can be described with common accepted taxonomies and do not differ that much though there certainly are room for more common adhered standards in some areas. The trade here is becoming more penetrated by marketplaces with their specific product information requirements. This sector counts for circa 1/6 of the world trade.
• The rest (including building materials, special electronics, machinery, homeware): This is a diverse segment of products groups and the product groups themselves are diverse. The requirements for product information completeness and other data quality dimensions are overwhelming and the choice of standards are many, so most often two trading partners will be on different pages. This sector counts for circa 2/3 of the world trade.

Note: Automotive (vehicles) is a special vertical, where the main products (for example cars) resembles mainstream electronics and all the spare parts resembles special electronics. Some retailers (like department stores) covers all sectors and therefore need hybrid solutions to their product information exchange handling challenges.

The main drivers for better product information handling are compliance – not at least within food, beverage and pharmaceuticals – and self-service purchasing (as in ecommerce), where the latter has raged many years within fashion, books and mainstream electronics and now also is raising in more B2B (business-to-business) biased product groups as building materials, special electronics and machinery.

Learn more about how to tackle these diverse needs in product information exchange in the article and discussion about Product Data Lake.