UCCnet Registers With Retail

So it's little wonder that consumer-goods companies and retailers are committing to UCCnet, a standards-based electronic network designed to add efficiencies to a supply chain that has historically been plagued by inaccuracies and delays. In a nutshell, suppliers upload information on items, such as weight, dimensions and prices, and trading-partner-store locations into the global registry. UCCnet checks the data for compliance with industry standards and synchronizes it with retailers, ensuring that all trading partners are using identical, compliant data.

Minneapolis-based General Mills, for one, has placed 1,500 of its products into UCCnet's global registry and is using its data-synchronization services to exchange item information with retailers. The food-products maker expects to save time and slash costs associated with invoices and purchase orders, product delivery and product maintenance errors.

General Mills hired Integrated Software Systems to translate and upload product data into the registry. In fact, integrators and VARs are looking to UCCnet to provide a substantial source of revenue from retail clients eager for improvements but cautious in their approach to technology change.

"We see a broad set of opportunities, from back-end integration to messaging to collaborative activities," says Tom Rauh, president of TR2 Consulting, a Stoneham, Mass.-based company that provides services such as ERP integration, data warehousing, security and application development.

Picking Up the Pace
UCCnet is a nonprofit subsidiary of the Uniform Code Council (UCC), the global standards organization that provides data-registry and data-synchronization services, such as bar codes. After a somewhat sluggish start, UCCnet has been steadily gaining participants, expanding from 50 subscribers in January 2002 to 256 by the end of last year. The list includes such well-known retailers and suppliers as A&P, Ace Hardware, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Dial, Food Lion, General Mills, Georgia-Pacific, Hershey Foods, Hy-Vee, Kellogg's, Kimberly-Clark and Lowe's.

The number of registered items on the network increased from 5,000 in January 2002 to about 41,000 by the end of the year. UCCnet officials say it is difficult to project how many new subscribers will sign up or how many items will be registered this year.

"The CPG [consumer packaged goods] industry is a fickle industry; these companies don't like to adopt something until it's old and proven," says Mark Monaghan, senior director of UCC's solution-provider program.

In addition, more than 50 solution providers have signed up as certified partners of UCCnet, providing a range of services, including systems integration, process design, enterprise-application integration, communications and translation of standard XML messages. TR2, for example, has worked with roughly 10 percent of all the suppliers that have signed up to use UCCnet, Rauh says, including American Dairy Brands, New England Coffee and Ocean Spray Cranberries.

Most manufacturers are still in the early stages of integration, entering product identification and pricing information into the UCCnet registry for access by retailers that carry their products. The major benefits to participants will come, Rauh says, when suppliers and retailers reach the collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment phases, probably still several years away.

Dessi Donkova, vice president of professional services at Digital Business Architects (DBA), Ashland, Mass., also sees opportunities for helping companies gain improvements through the network. DBA helps companies with their UCCnet implementations and offers training programs on how to load data and make changes. The company, which is working with five clients on UCCnet projects, has developed a set of tools to speed deployment of XML-based UCCnet integrations.

Donkova says the number of large consumer-goods retailers likely to join UCCnet is relatively limited, but there are thousands of suppliers that could sign up, and that's the market DBA is going after. The most lucrative projects are the major two- or three-month integration projects in which DBA helps clients link their legacy systems with UCCnet.

UCC's Monaghan expects many companies will need help with the implementation of UCCnet capabilities. "They're correcting many years of improper use of the [UCC] standards," Monaghan says, "and they have to aggregate, categorize and clean up all the product information, then get it into UCCnet. Integrators are critically important in the effort."

In Sync With UCCnet
Retailers have been particularly aggressive in pushing for industrywide adoption of UCCnet. For example, in January, Wegmans Food Markets, a Rochester, N.Y.-based grocery retailer and one of the earliest UCCnet adopters, and Nestle Purina PetCare announced they had achieved full data synchronization for communicating product information for all Purina product categories carried by Wegmans.

Through UCCnet, both companies have access to a synchronized product-authorization file, ensuring that accurate information on products is always available. Purina can update information on existing products or add new product information. When information is changed or added, it's automatically transmitted to Wegmans through UCCnet and integrated with Wegmans' ERP system. The companies are now working on the next step: getting accurate pricing information in the registry.

Marianne Timmons, the retailer's director of business to business, says Wegman's is working "feverishly" on loading new suppliers into UCCnet, and expects to save $1.5 million per year in increased supply-chain efficiency. "The ultimate goal is to get our items in sync with our trading partners'," she adds. "[UCCnet] sets the foundation for all business-to-business applications going forward."

The company has managed to do its own UCCnet integration, but "if you're just starting out now, there's a very sound business case for looking for an integrator for help," Timmons says.

Oak Brook, Ill.-based Ace Hardware, which signed up for UCCnet last October, hopes to begin pulling data on supplier items from the registry by August or September, says Linda Moriarty, supply-chain manager. It is too early to tell if the company will use a systems integrator to help with the implementations, she says.

The hardware retailer expects the benefits to include more reliable data in the supply chain. "Hopefully, this will get us more item accuracy," Moriarty says. "When you're talking about 62,000 items, 2,000 vendors and 15 warehouses, there is a lot of room for error."

Bob Violino ([email protected]) is a freelance writer based in Massapequa Park, N.Y.