Kellogg was faced with meeting Europe’s Food Information Regulation (EU-1169) which required consistent product nutritional, ingredient, and allergen information for consumer sales channels. Moreover, North American retailers have been requesting similar product information to address growing consumer needs. Having product information residing in multiple, disparate systems, with no common means to exchange that information made product data transparency a challenge.
Solution
By implementing product information management (PIM) systems, as a single point of data aggregation between internal systems, Kellogg established a streamlined process to enable easier, more complete product information sharing with both retail customers and their consumers. The approach also paved the way for future Kellogg markets to leverage a global enterprise solution.
Benefits
• Global compliance for product information, including EU-1169 and various retailer mandates
• Global aggregation of logistics and Nutritional/Allergen/Ingredient information
• Connectivity to GDSN and distribution of product information via 1WorldSync to trading partners and customers
• Capability to distribute product information to external stakeholders in multiple data formats
Data Aggregation
In response to the growing demands for product information from retail customers and consumers, Kellogg initiated a significant global project. The objective was to collate and organize Kellogg’s internal product data and provide that data to recipients and end-consumers in a standardized and efficient manner.
In reviewing current and future data requirements for Kellogg, the team, sponsored by the Kellogg’s Global Digital Enablement & Operations and Global IT functions, set out to leverage centralized resources and data sources to improve data quality, reduce duplicate job functions, decrease costs, and meet the ever-growing demands of customers and regulatory requirements.
Becoming Proactive in Data Management
As a trusted advisor to Kellogg for GS1 Standards and the Global Data Synchronization Network™ (GDSN®), Kellogg engaged the 1WorldSync Professional Services team. 1WorldSync worked with the Kellogg’s project team to conduct a review of the current business and technical product data flows in Europe and the US, in order to provide objective observations and recommendations. Additionally, with Kellogg’s goals in mind, 1WorldSync mapped out a proposed future state for product data flow and on-going data quality, which included a new architecture incorporating product information management systems.
The current state challenges for Kellogg include:
• Multiple instances of ERP per region of the world, nutritional information in separate, non-ERP systems;
• Inconsistent processes globally, including multiple subscriptions to multiple data pools; and
• Significant manual data entry which could lead to result in errors.
The future state that 1WorldSync and Kellogg worked on to collaboratively define:
• Aggregates multiple ERPs per region of the world, along with non-ERP systems, resulting in one single source of truth for all consumer-facing product information;
• Streamlines processes and establishes consistency for data globally;
• Maximizes usage of GDSN processes to eliminate manual data entry when possible.
1WorldSync provided thought leadership, data mapping services, and project management for the implementation and deployment of the product information management solution set. The 1WorldSync team plays an active role in requirements gathering, design, configuration and development, testing, and implementation of the solution.
Reaching Goals
The first goal readies Kellogg for compliance with EU-1169 regulation. Beyond regulatory compliance, Kellogg will utilize new streamlined architecture and processes to meet demands of customers and consumers across all sales channels. Near term, the solution will facilitate extensive data requirements from retailers such as Kroger and Walmart in North America.