This Week in IDEA | November 21, 2007

New IRD CERICOMX® Customers

IDEA, a 1SYNC Data Pool On-Board Solution (OBS) partner, implements suppliers that subscribe to the 1SYNC data pool using IDEA's IRD CERICOMX® application. IDEA was recently assigned two suppliers:

• M-ROCK, Inc. 
• Lucky Country, Inc. 

These companies will be trained to use IRD CERICOMX®, an IDEA branded product for supporting and uploading supplier product information into the GS1 Registry® and GDSN via the 1SYNC Data Pool.

If you would like to learn more about the CERICOMX® product, please contact John Etrie, IRD Product & Customer Support Manager, at (703) 562-4624.

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Inbound Mapper Tool Enhances IDW Flexibility

IDEA recently completed testing on the Industry Data Warehouse (IDW) Inbound Mapper. The Inbound Mapper is a tool designed to simplify the IDW data importing process for suppliers, similar to how the Outbound Mapper simplifies the exporting process for distributors and other trading partners. This tool will match supplier transactional data to the IDW standardized format and provide more flexible load options by allowing suppliers to develop fully customizable maps compatible with EZView PIPE 2.4. These custom maps will help automate the data loading process resulting in:

• Time Savings
• Improved data accuracy
• Faster data loads

The Inbound Mapper will be fully supported by the IDEA staff and it will be available to IDW customers in December. As a prerequisite, customers must complete the Inbound Mapper and Data Quality Training Programs so stay tuned for the December Training schedule in next week’s issue. Contact Bob Whitehouse, IDW Program Director, at (703) 562-4608 for more information.

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Tim Sanders, Former CSO of Yahoo!, Selected to Speak at The E-Biz Forum 2008

IDEA is excited to announce Tim Sanders, one of the most sought-after speakers in America today, as the Opening Keynote Speaker for the E-Biz Forum 2008.

Tim is a New York Times and international bestselling author and an advocate for good values in the business world. His two books include Love is the Killer App and The Likeability Factor (Crown, April 2005). His second book serves as the basis for both PBS and 20/20 television specials, showing how you can achieve your life’s dreams by increasing your likeability factor.

Tim has deep experience in cutting-edge businesses, most recently a senior level executive at Yahoo!, serving as Yahoo!’s Leadership Coach and prior to that as Chief Solutions Officer, where he oversaw next-generation marketing programs to world class brands.

Tim has also received an enthusiastic endorsement from Tom Peters, the renowned business motivational speaker. He developed and honed his speaking skills as a competitive debater, where he was national debate and public speaking champion in five categories over his career. He frequently appears as a guest on radio and television programs across the country, and delivers high-energy speeches and compelling seminars to high-level executive conferences, professional associations, and graduate schools.

Tim attended Loyola Marymount University as an undergraduate and the University of Arizona for graduate work.

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The Keys to Data Quality

A PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Data Survey of 452 company Chief Information Officers shows data management strategies are still not a top priority among senior executives. Only 34% of the respondents claimed to be “very confident” in the quality of their data.

The quality of your product and price information may cost your business vast amounts of money and lead to disruptions in the supply chain, poor business decisions and inferior customer service. Whether it is a manufacturer’s or distributor’s data base, data quality can be compromised many ways.

1. Received – how is the data received or managed. If data or data processes are outsourced to a 3rd party, external data quality may be questionable.
2. Processed – when incorrect data enters your operating system it may be propagated across multiple systems or locations compromising data quality throughout your company. Even simple and straight forward data quality errors can grow into a complex tangle that sabotages company wide data quality efforts. 
3. Stored – storing data in multiple systems puts data consistency at risk.
4. Merged, consolidated, integrated – when bringing data together from multiple systems to improve operational effectiveness or create an internal/company data warehouse or improve customer service, you will most likely face disparate and inconsistent data across the enterprise.
5. Maintained – each act of data maintenance creates a potential opportunity for errors that may have unpredictable consequences.
6. Entered – data quality suffers when data fields are left blank or incorrectly filled in with the wrong value or industry standards and requirements.

Keys to Data Quality

1. Standards - Understand and adopt industry data standards- standardized business information is the foundation for commerce and when companies use the same terms for unit of measure, for example, it eliminates confusion and provides information consistency between trading partners.
2. Monitoring - Assess your internal data quality and monitor and report (create report card method) on the ongoing quality of that information to your company stakeholders.
3. Cleansing – implement business processes and tools such as Product Information Management (PIM) applications to enable your business team to manage the process for correcting and enhancing data. Parse, transform and correct existing data in a well thought out plan.
4. Centralize – use an external centralized information bank such as the Industry data Warehouse (IDW) for storing and disseminating your business information to your trading partners, manufacturer reps and end customers.
5. Validate – participate in the industry Data Audit Certification program.
6. Data Match – match similar records or SKUs with your trading partners. Unless trading partner the data is identical mismatched data still requires manual reconciliation processes that costs money. In the PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Data Study 50% of the respondents had incurred extra costs sue to the need for internal reconciliations and 33% failed to bill or collect receivables.
7. Management – make data quality a senior management executive objective and measure on going effort and effectiveness.

Assessing your company’s data and adopting a proactive, business focused data quality strategy is the fastest and most cost effective way to resolve data quality issues.

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Did You Know? IDW Hot Facts

IDW's custom outbound map allows distributors to account for the cash discounts they receive from a supplier due to the formation of an effective trading partner relationship.

For example, if a distributor is receiving 2% 10th Prox from one manufacturer and they want to reflect the discount in their data download, they can set up outbound formats so that all downloaded records are populated with that specific rate.

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Happy Thanksgiving to Our Friends and Customers!

In this time of gratitude, we are thankful to count you among our friends and customers. We value your patronage and appreciate your confidence in us. From the entire IDEA staff, we wish you a happy Thanksgiving!

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