What is the GDSN?
What does it mean that ITN is becoming a GDSN certified data pool?
What are ITN’s advantages as a data pool?
Why would I publish or receive product information to / through ITN if I’m already working through another GDSN data pool?
Why is ITN becoming a GDSN certified data pool?
How does ITN becoming a GDSN certified data pool benefit me specifically?
Is ITN's data pool ready to support your companies requirements?
How does Catalog Exchange differ from the GDSN?
How does this change the data synchronization that ITN offers today?
How do the standards and initiatives driven by GS1 benefit the food industry?
When will I be able to connect to the GDSN through ITN?
What are ITN’s capabilities to support and educate on the GS1 System fundamentals?
How many successful implementations (supply side) has ITN completed?
What is the scope of ITN's geographic connections?
Will the ITN Data Pool have Service Offerings?
What validations does the ITN Data Pool provide?
Does the ITN Data Pool have Data Accuracy initiatives?
What attributes about a product must a supplier provide in order to publish it through the GDSN?
What do I need to do with GS1 in order to participate in the GDSN or assign GLNs or GTINs?
What about security? Will everyone in the GDSN be able to view my product information?
What about trading partners and suppliers in Canada on ECCnet?
What is a GLN?
What is a GTIN?
Who is GS1?
What is the GS1 Global Registry?
What will be the subsciption and fees?
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| What is the GDSN? |
| The Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) is a distributed system of independent, interoperable and global data pools that was launched by GS1 in 2004. These data pools communicate with the GS1 Global Registry, enabling suppliers to publish their product information to their customers in order to ensure that they have the most accurate and up-to-date product or location information. Without the GDSN, trading partners would have to connect to each supplier in order to get information, and it would be extremely difficult to know when new products are available or information had changed. |
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| What does it mean that ITN is becoming a GDSN certified data pool? |
| ITN is seeking certification as both a source and recipient data pool and will be fully interoperable within the GDSN. When ITN is certified, suppliers can publish their catalog globally making it available to trading partners both inside and outside ITN’s network and downstream trading partners (e.g., a distributor, operator or retailer) will be able to receive / subscribe to suppliers’ information regardless of whether or not they provide their product information directly to ITN or even purchase those products through ITN. |
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| Why would I publish or receive product information to / through ITN if I’m already working through another GDSN data pool? |
| With ITN’s certification as a GDSN data pool, a supplier does not need to provide its information to ITN as was previously required in order to support its customers on the ITN Collaborative Supply Chain Platform. Integration with ITN will be much easier. |
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| What are ITN’s advantages as a data pool? |
| ITN provides customers a single point of access to products from suppliers that publish through the GDSN as well as those who do not use it (e.g., they have not registered GTINs). Relying on a GDSN data pool for product information alone means that a company may miss having a complete picture of their supply chain. Suppliers save time and improve margins by using ITN as their source data pool since ITN’s solutions are used for mission-critical commerce with their trading partners as opposed to only working with a data pool to source their product information. On other words, ITN is a “one-stop” shop. |
| ITN also allows trading partners to store their own catalog with product information they want and synchronize it to their suppliers’ catalogs, tying back to the product’s ultimate source. Trading partners will always retain their own SKUs (e.g., to specify shelf or warehouse slot location), regardless of whether or not a GTIN is available. Synchronization across catalogs enables all parties to speak in any language yet still have a common base: the GTIN. |
| ITN provides customers great flexibility in terms of how to create, maintain and search product information. A customer may use a UI as well as choose from any number of file formats and layouts through which to provide product information. ITN can support any number of custom attributes a supplier’s trading partners require. |
| Finally, ITN is focused on the needs of the food industry as opposed to many different industries and types of products. |
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| Why is ITN becoming a GDSN certified data pool? |
| ITN has always been a technology leader in the food industry as well as an expert in master data management and has supported standards-driven attributes such as UPCs and GTINs for years. Certification is a natural evolution for our Collaborative Supply Chain Platform considering that awareness, and more importantly participation, in GS1-driven global standards initiatives has increased in recent years. ITN is enhancing its data synchronization capabilities in order to enable its customers to more quickly and efficiently participate in and enjoy the benefits of GS1 initiatives. |
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| How does ITN becoming a GDSN certified data pool benefit me specifically? |
| It enhances the benefits that ITN’s data synchronization already provides to it's customers today: |
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| Is ITN's data pool ready to support your companies requirements? |
| ITN is developing a fully certified GSDN-compliant data pool that implements all functionality required by the GDSN specification. In addition, ITN will support GDSN-compliant extensions to the core trade item model that are relevant to the foodservice industry, such as the Food and Beverage extension. As such, ITN expects to support all customer requirements that are permissible within the GDSN specification, and enhancements to existing features could be made if a specific requirement is necessary. |
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| How does Catalog Exchange differ from the GDSN? |
| Catalog Exchange enables buyers and sellers to enjoy functionality and benefits similar to the GDSN without requiring GS1-compliance and takes the effort out of maintaining accurate buyer catalogs. Similar to when a supplier and buyer are connected to the GDSN, buyers can easily identify when suppliers update product information. When a product is linked across buyer and seller catalogs, Catalog Exchange can automatically update the buyer’s product information based upon the supplier’s. A buyer product that has an inaccurate or missing GTIN, for example, can be automatically populated with the GTIN from the corresponding supplier product. Both suppliers and buyers save time and ensure their customers have the product information they need. When coupled with ITN’s GDSN module, buyers have complete visibility into all product information changes through a single solution regardless of whether or not a supplier is publishing through a GDSN data pool. |
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| How does this change the data synchronization that ITN offers today? |
| ITN’s automated matching algorithms take most of the effort out of synchronizing catalogs; therefore, as trading partners take advantage of available product information updating their own catalogs, match rates will increase since products will automatically match across GTINs regardless of whether or not they continue to maintain their own SKU (e.g., to specify shelf or warehouse slot location). |
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| How do the standards and initiatives driven by GS1 benefit the food industry? |
| There are several different ways in which the standards and initiatives driven by GS1 benefit all segments of the supply chain: |
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| When will I be able to connect to the GDSN through ITN? |
| GS1’s GDSN Certification committee is in the process of approving the next certification test, at which point a date will be scheduled. After ITN has passed the test, we will be fully interoperable in the GDSN. Regardless of this timeline, ITN is actively developing the capability and will be ready as soon as the certification test is scheduled. |
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| What are ITN’s capabilities to support and educate on the GS1 System fundamentals? |
| ITN has deep industry experience collaborating with buyers and suppliers on product catalog information and has a proven track record of working with customers to develop solutions that meet both their near term objectives and long term strategic direction.ITN has a broad understanding of the GDSN standard as a result of our participation in the standards and certification processes and through our in-house development of a data pool. ITN has also actively participated in all food industry data synchronization initiatives for over 10 years. As such, we will work with customers to provide training on GDSN tailored to a specific customer’s needs via our experience professional services organization. |
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| How many successful implementations (supply side) has ITN completed? |
| ITN is currently in the process of certifying its data pool. However, ITN is already integrated with over 300 manufacturers and distributors to source catalog data encompassing over 5 million items across a variety of different formats (such as flat file, EDI, XML, Excel). ITN has a proven methodology for integrations with trading partners that is applicable to, and will ensure success on GDSN implementations. An effective measure of ITN’s success in this area is facilitating average invoice autovoucher rates in excess of 95%. |
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| What is the scope of ITN's geographic connections? |
| ITN is a global organization with offices in California, Boise, and the United Kingdom. ITN is also currently facilitating trading relationships between manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and operators located in 80 different countries around the globe including the US, Canada, UK, EC, Mexico. Furthermore the GDSN is a global data synchronization network of interoperable data pools and ITN will connect with all active, GDSN-certified data pools that customers wish to receive or publish data to. |
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| Will the ITN Data Pool have Service Offerings? |
| ITN has a broad solution suite encompassing all aspects of the food industry supply chain that leverage foundational data synchronization including, but not limited to, Order Management, Branded Procurement, Quality, Sourcing, Business Analytics, Contract Management, and Transportation. Through our professional services organization the solution suite can be tailored to a particular customer’s needs as necessary. |
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| What validations will the ITN Data Pool provide? |
| ITN expects to support all validations that are mandated by the GDSN specification, including validations performed at the XSD schema level (such as data types, required / optional attributes, and valid value lists) as well as non-schema validations specified by GS1 (over 100). ITN can also accommodate any specific validations that a customer may require. |
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| Will the ITN Data Pool have Data Accuracy initiatives? |
| ITN has over 10 years experience in catalog synchronization, data enrichment, data standardization, and data validation and has developed a host of proprietary tools to facilitate such processes that require only minimum of time and effort while ensuring extremely high data accuracy. ITN can work with customers to determine the applicability of such tools to the customer’s specific GDSN goals and initiatives. Additionally, new features can be added as market and customer requirements shift and drive data requirement changes. |
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| What attributes about a product must a supplier provide in order to publish it through the GDSN? |
| Although ITN has significant flexibility in terms of the attributes shared with trading partners within its network, a supplier must not only register a GTIN but provide certain attributes in order to publish through the GDSN. A list of these attributes is available in GS1’s specifications and can vary by industry (e.g., produce). |
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| What do I need to do with GS1 in order to participate in the GDSN or assign GLNs or GTINs? |
| Before a company can participate in the GDSN, it must join GS1 US or the appropriate GS1 member organization (i.e., a Canada-based company would go through GS1 Canada). The GS1 US program to join is called Partner Connections. A company must join regardless of whether or not you will publish or receive information (i.e., a supplier or retailer, respectively). There is an initiation fee as well as an annual fee, both of which are based on the company’s revenue and the number of products and locations it plans to identify. After joining, your company will be assigned a GS1 Company Prefix, which is used for both GLNs and GTINs your company will generate. |
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| What about security? Will everyone in the GDSN be able to view my product information? |
| ITN takes security very seriously and even today requires a supplier to indicate which trading partners in the network may view their catalog down to specifying specific products. Similarly, the GDSN requires that a supplier expressly publish their data to another organization anywhere in the GDSN. |
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| What about trading partners and suppliers in Canada on ECCnet? |
| ITN has full interoperability today with ECCnet with many suppliers and trading partners leveraging the integration. |
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| What is a GLN? |
| GLN is the Global Location Number and a globally unique 13-digit number. It can be used to identify any legal (e.g., company, subsidiary) or functional (e.g., department) entity or a physical location (e.g., loading dock, distribution center, store or down to even a shelf). |
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| What is a GTIN? |
| GTIN is the Global Trade Item Number and a globally unique 14-digit number used to identify a product or even service. It is almost always assigned by the supplier, however, there are instances in which it may not be. A GTIN may be used and assigned at various levels within a particular product’s packaging: case, box, unit. Alternatively, there are GTIN numbering options fewer than 14-digits, but these options do not impart as complete information about the product. |
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| Who is GS1? |
| GS1 is a Brussels-based international not-for-profit association that develops and implements global standards and the solutions supporting dissemination and adoption of those standards. In order to efficiently communicate and operate, each country generally has its own GS1 member organization (e.g., GS1 Canada, GS1 Argentina)- think of them as branches- and currently there are 100+; however, they ultimately roll up through GS1 in order to reach a global consensus. The GS1 is focused in three key areas: barcodes, eCom or electronic business messaging standards allowing automatic electronic transmission of data, the GDSN and EPCglobal which is focused on RFID standards to enable item identification, track and trace |
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| What is the GS1 Global Registry? |
| GS1 Global Registry is an index or a Yellow Pages directory, for the GDSN. It ensures that GLNs and GTINs are globally unique and indicates which data pool is the ultimate source for a product or location’s information and who subscribes to that information. |
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| What will be the subsciption and fees? |
| ITN values its current relationship with our existing customers and looks forward to expanding it further through the GDSN program. Accordingly, ITN is prepared to provide early-adopter, strategic pricing to our existing customers. However, because of the number of variable factors involved we cannot provide specific pricing until we have undertaken a full evaluation of your needs and requirements. |
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