Suppliers and distributors can automate joint processes that take a lot of time when completed manually using interfaces: i.e. placing products in the web shop or putting together quotes. The prerequisite for this is well-prepared product data, which is very work-intensive for the suppliers because the systems of the trading partners are totally different. There is no uniform standard for the industry in sight – but according to the experts this is not absolutely necessary. Instead of waiting for the introduction of a standard, they recommend to simply get started.

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Interfaces are the technical answer to the corporate demand for automated workflows via IT systems beyond company borders and continents. They save all of the market participants a considerable amount of effort spent on standardisable processes that would otherwise have to be carried out manually – and thus make an important resource free for other tasks: Time. Interfaces not only connect the individual partners of a sales chain with each other, they also link up different working areas within a company such as quotation management, merchandise management and accounting. However, interfaces are only the technical components of this automation process. The actual challenge that the manufacturers and trade sectors of all industries are faced with today when it comes down to a smooth flow of data information across the entire sales chain, lies in the preparation of the product data: This data has to be recorded and categorised in such a way that it can also be used by the systems of the sales partners. The preparation of product data and interfaces is also essential in the promotional products industry so that it can keep up with its rivals in terms of the budgets of the end customers, their service expectations and above all the speed at which orders can be processed. The task applies for both suppliers and distributors – and gains intensity for both parties the more the trade moves in the direction of online sales.

Many variables

The Dutch company, Pinkcube B.V., is one of the full professionals in the online promotional products trade. Unlike many distributors that started off with a traditional business model and who are now faced with the question whether to, and if so, how to additionally expand their sales via the web, Pinkcube directly entered the scene in 2009 with a purely digital sales model. “In comparison to other industries, in our market we are faced with a unique challenge, since promotional products display so many different variables. In addition to the actual product characteristics, the theme customising also crops up: Possible techniques, imprinting surfaces, colour specifications. This makes the collection of the product data much more complex compared to other industries,” explained Marianne Wesselink, E-Commerce Manager at Pinkcube. The Dutch company only works together with a comparably small group of suppliers – on the one hand because it has high demands regarding the speed of delivery, on the other hand also because it is imperative that it receives correct and exploitable data from its suppliers. “There are two ways to Data is usually passed in the form of xml files between two systems. The format can be read by both humans and machines. make the product data of the supplier suitable for the web shop: We could enter all of the variables of all products of all suppliers into our internal system by hand – this guarantees maximum accuracy, but is far too time-consuming. Or we implement the data of the suppliers and adapt it accordingly with the aid of software developed especially for the purpose: This is our business model, we have written our own programmes and employ four developers, who are responsible for this process.” This “translation aid” between the suppliers’ data and the distributor shops is necessary, because there is no standard within the industry according to which product data is recorded and described. Here standard means the classification of the description, not the technical transmission: The latter normally occurs within the promotional products industry as in other industries via an Xml feed.

Xml is a so-called mark-up language for the illustration of hierarchical structured data in a text file format, which can be read by both people and machines. Xml is implemented for the platform and implementation-independent exchange of data between computer systems, for example Google and Amazon work with Xml feeds as well. Just like Wesselink, Magali Chéchin, Export Manager at the French product database provider, European Sourcing, emphasises that the supplier and distributor have to agree exactly on the system implemented for the preparation of the product data before a data exchange takes place. “We process the data of more than 400 suppliers and millions of products and make them available to 2,000 distributors – so they have to be prepared extremely carefully otherwise neither the distributor tools nor the search engines work,” commented Chéchin. Hence, European Sourcing provides the suppliers with a template in the form of an Excel document which they can use to prepare their data in line with the respective structure and logic thereof. The template features 147 columns for the product description and price information – without information on the customising options so that all types of products can be reasonably recorded with their individual characteristics (barrel length of a ballpoint pen, the cuts of textiles, etc.). Furthermore, at European Sourcing the service is offered in eight languages: “Our partner suppliers have to provide us with their product data in all the languages they want to serve their distributor customers with via our platform,” stated Chéchin. Hence, unlike at Pinkcube, the data transfer at the French company involves a great deal of manual work: “If we were to simply transfer the data to our system in an automated process and don’t notice any mistakes, these would go online onto the websites of 500 distributors. That risk is too high,” said Chéchin. This approach is very time-consuming and work-intensive for the company: Four people work full-time on the indexing depending on the quality of the supplier data. Checking and where necessary altering the data takes between several hours and several days.

The task is by no means finished once the data has been integrated into the system of a partner: “After the initial provision of his data, the supplier has to keep updating it accurately and has to send us the revised data straightaway in the case of price increases,” said Wesselink from Pinkcube: “If he doesn’t do so, wrong information will be displayed on our website to the end customers.”

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Clear rules

Wesselink underlined why the data exchange is frequently so complicated using the example of the product category. “A laptop bag may be referred to as a ‘laptop bag’ by supplier A, whereas it is called a ‘notebook bag’ by supplier B, whilst supplier C refers to it as a ‘briefcase with a laptop compartment’. The software that picks up the data of the supplier at the joint interface, has to recognise these synonyms. For all suppliers and all of their product groups. It becomes even more complex when the internal structure of the supplier doesn’t follow any uniform rules and a supplier works with several synonyms for the same category.” So, rules are important. “Many suppliers are faced with the task of processing their product data digitally – and don’t know where to start,” reported Daniel Jeschonowski, Managing Director of Senator and Director of the Digitalisation Working Committee of the German Promotional Products Association, GWW. And recommends nevertheless: simply get started. “The generation of interfaces is a long-term process that cannot be carried out overnight. So, one simply has to begin somewhere with a trading partner. Both parties can initially make do with an 80:20 approach: At Senator for instance 80% of the enquiries are for a one-coloured screen print on the barrel or clip of a ballpoint pen. Once the necessary data for this product exists and has been described a big step forward has already been made.” Wesselink from Pinkcube also advises everyone to act: There is no such thing as the perfect feed. However, each supplier can set himself some clear rules and model his data correspondingly. It makes no sense to wait for a standard – that is never going to happen.”

Jeschonowski doesn’t believe a universal standard is going to be introduced soon either – and proposes another solution instead: “We should concentrate on the so-called middleware – tools for transferring data from one system to the other. Each partner has to define a standard illustration option for his data and compare this with that of the partner – if clear decisions are taken here, a lot of processes can be automated via interfaces. The onliners have already defined such standards for themselves and communicate these to the suppliers they cooperate with.”

The online trade is driving the market

One supplier, who invests a lot of time, money and manpower into the processing of product data is the Dutch import company, PF Concept. “When we began implementing data services for our product data five years ago, it was among others a reaction to the online distributors who didn’t want to work together with PF Concept, because we couldn’t provide our data in the appropriate format,” recalled Jeroen Nikkelen, Director E-Commerce in Roelofarendsveen. “Shortly afterwards, Google also became an important driving force regarding correct product data. At the time Google started ranking a company depending on the quality of its data and laid down rules according to which product characteristics are to be communicated.” Nikkelen explained that the company began qualifying the data, a process that has been constantly intensified in waves ever since: “The product data demands constant changes. High-quality product descriptions and subsequently visualisations were added to the definitions of the product characteristics. In the meantime, other data is dominating the theme in our market: The visualisation of the customisation on the product has gained enormous significance.”

Presently, Nikkelen’s team comprising of ten employees is thus concentrating on logo tools, which depict the ready-to-approve finished product. “If we can automate the approval process of orders per E-Proof, we save time.” Nikkelen considers PF Concept to be a pioneer in the field of digitalisation within the promotional products industry: “We want to be the standard. Regarding our web shop we orientate ourselves on the retail market, even if the data quality in our industry is not as well-developed yet.” He considers the key question to be, who lays down the data structure: “The rules should be determined by the E-Commerce department, not by the product management. The data has to be suitable for different sales channels for different target groups – that is a task for a content manager.” Nikkelen thus thinks PIM systems – Product Information Management Systems – will take off soon: These provide product information for implementation in different output media or sales channels as well as for different locations. “The current challenge is the efficient maintenance of contents. Know-how on search engine optimisation is easy to acquire, everyone can learn how to write a product description. However, a correct product description no longer suffices for a B2B web shop. My team has to be able to manage categories, key words, filters and symbols. There comes the point in time when not all of the contents can be processed via Excel. Then, a system is needed that facilitates this, because in the near future there will no doubt be new content demands, which we have to offer. This can’t always be solved by expanding the team.” The goal of PF Concept: The distributors should in future use the web shop of the importer to place an order. “This saves the distributor time because he can also directly forward on the data to his customer using this method.”

The traditional trade profits too

Despite all efforts to set up a digital network, the trade often asks itself the question: Is this all necessary? Or doesn’t the traditional exchange with the customers and suppliers via telephone and e-mail work anymore? The question is justified: “A distributor should precisely define whether it is necessary for him to operate a web shop for instance, which in turn also involves him competing directly with the onliners. That is a strategic decision: If that is not his main field of business, he is advised to use his website more for presenting his consulting skills,” advised Nikkelen. Jeschonowski is of the opinion that the theme interfaces is a great opportunity for the traditional trade: “The advance of the E-Commerce doesn’t change the traditional industry structures, this model remains intact and relevant. However, online distributors can implement a different cost structure, because they dispose of more efficient technology and professional online sales. The classic distributor has two disadvantages as a result: His consulting service is on the one hand demanded by the customer, but he doesn’t want to have to pay for it. And his processes are often not digitalised yet – so they are very time-consuming.” Jeschonowski considers the solution for the classic trade to be automating the processes that have nothing to do with consulting in order to gain time that it can invest in its core competence – consulting. “Consulting is still extremely important and is also not at risk – but it is expensive because it takes time. The distributor has to save this time somewhere else in order to be able to secure his advantage over the online trade long-term.”

A few weeks ago, the German promotional products industry association, GWW started offering its member companies initial support in the form of a template for the standardised exchange of quotation data: The distributor forwards on a request by his customer in a non-standardised format (i.e. per e-mail) to the supplier. The supplier processes the quote as a standardised Xml file, so that the distributor can import it into his ERP system. In this way, the distributor can summarise various offers from different suppliers in one quote for his customers. “The structure in which the supplier displays the data is pre-defined for this quotation tool,” explained Jeschonowski – and demands more commitment from the suppliers: “The trade is very willing to change over to using such a system, but in my opinion the suppliers don’t really see the need here. At present the prevailing attitude is that the distributors have to solve this task and predefine the data structures.” However, interfaces are not a one-way street, they only work if both sides cooperate.

// Brit München

photos: Shutterstock/BEST-BACKGROUNDS (1), metamorworks (1)

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