�Globally, $40 billion is lost annually due to supply chain inefficiencies. �As much as 30 per cent of item data in retail catalogues is in error. �Each of these errors cost organisations $60-$80 to rectify. �Manual cleansing of the data has a resource impact of 25 minutes per stock-keeping unit, annually. �About 25 per cent of FMCG sales are lost because the product is out-of-stock at the retail outlet. These are some of the issues that Efficient Consumer Response India (ECR), a movement launched by the FMCG sector in India in 1999, is looking to address. Hence the recent announcement of the Global Data Synchronisation (GDS) Services, a common information data pool, that, claim members of the ECR, will work for the benefit of the Indian consumer.

This is how the data pool will work: members would either be suppliers (who publish the information) or retailers (who subscribe to the information). Any change in product identification, colour, size, ingredients, hierarchy and so on, can be accessed by subscribing retailers by updating information in the pool. Members need to have a network that supports data pools. The pool can be accessed in two ways. One, through the web, either by maintaining an online database, or preparing information offline and uploading it. And two, through an online machine-to-machine interface.... more