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· 3 min read

For Coen Bakker Deco, since retailers in the Garden & Animal sector have joined the GS1 data pool, it is a necessity for the exchange of product data to be GS1 compliant.

After consultation with GS1 Netherlands, it soon becomes apparent that manually entering product data is not an option. With more than 3,000 products, this would be a much too time-consuming task. To speed up this process, Coen Bakker Deco has enlisted the help of Qmica.

Qmica

With Qmica, Coen Bakker Deco has been able to quickly and efficiently transform, validate and publish its product data to the GS1 standard DIY & Garden and Animal. In less than 3 months, all products are live in the GS1 data pool and retailers can use correct, consistent and standardized product data from Coen Bakker Deco. 

Complete product data

Hester Kok, project leader GS1 Coen Bakker Deco explains:

“With the solution from Qmica, we were able to make our product data suitable for GS1 in a short period of time.

With the Qmica application we have easily mapped and validated our product data according to the guidelines of GS1. We can publish our product data in the Trade Connectors GS1 data pool.

Without the help of this application we would not have been able to achieve this in such a short time. Qmica will also make things easier for us in the future because the latest GS1 data model is always available in the application and we only have to keep track of the changes.

The process is clear, Hester continues her story:

  • Qmica has analyzed our article file and where necessary we have jointly added data. For example, it is important to include a classification (GPC or Brick code) in the article file. This makes selecting the right GS1 attributes easier.
  • After enriching the required data, the article data was uploaded into the application and we created mappings. In practice, this works very efficiently because Qmica implements the mappings throughout the entire article file.
  • Practical matters such as converting commas into points and converting from CMT to MMT have enabled us to realize the extensive conversion options within Qmica without having to adjust this in our own systems.
  • Finally, a validation process has been started which works very easily. Then it is also immediately visible what data is still missing for certain products.
  • After validation, we registered the valid products in the data pool of GS1 Netherlands with one push of a button.”

· 3 min read

Philips Lighting (Signify) is one of the world's leading manufacturers of LED lighting. For more than 125 years, Signify has been at the forefront of lighting innovation and quality. Signify is the world market leader in connected LED lighting systems, software and services.

Good article data is crucial

Consumers are increasingly orientating and buying online. Good product information is of crucial importance in this respect. Leading retailers such as Intergamma, Maxeda and Hubo.be have therefore taken the step to GS1 and are asking suppliers to provide product information to the GS1 data pool.

From “own” language to sector language

This is often where the major struggles with suppliers begin. In internal systems, the supplier has assigned its own product specifications and values ​​to its articles (article data).

The goal is to convert this into industry-generic product specifications and values ​​(universal article data). Manually converting and updating internal article data to a standard language is time-consuming and error-prone. Qmica has been developed to prevent this.

Qmica automates and facilitates the efficient exchange of product information in certain standard languages, such as GS1. Qmica is a mapping tool that converts “own” language to standard language. Both attributes and values ​​can be converted.

How can it be done quickly and efficiently, without problems

For example, Signify (Philips Lighting) has achieved enormous time savings with the help of Qmica when connecting to the GS1 data pool.

Gunther Thans, Marketing Operations Manager at Signify, is positive about the way in which Qmica has been deployed and the time savings achieved:

“The transition to online has accelerated the need for standardization of data for the consumer market. The DIY sector has many different data standards and input templates. This makes it complex for suppliers to get data to customers in a good way.

With the help of Qmica we have translated our data to the GS1 data standard.

If you realize that we have about 2,500 products, each with an average of 70 attributes, then you understand how complex and time-consuming it is to enter that manually. That is why we immediately started with Qmica. I can now say that partly because of this we have shortened the lead time of this project by half.

In Qmica you can enter data and specify the translation per data element. Suppose dark blue should become blue, then you only have to enter it once. The software adjusts it automatically for all products.

The big advantage for the future is that we now have all datasets ready. This makes introducing new products simple. We only need a few clicks to have a new product validated and exported. We no longer have to go through the entire standard per product, but are ready to go.”

Data quality

Intergamma notes that the implementation process at Signify went much faster than at suppliers who do not yet use Qmica.

The data quality has also increased considerably as a result. Which ultimately leads to more satisfaction and sales for the consumer, the supplier and the retailer.

Jacco Kapitein from Qmica adds: Our solution fills the gap between “own” language and standard language. We maintain the included standards, so that the supplier does not have to do this in his own systems.

In addition, Qmica provides the correct export to the correct channel after conversion. With Qmica, suppliers are able to speak sector language quickly and efficiently without having to maintain all kinds of manual and error-prone processes.