Retail Industry:Industry Associations
There are a number of industry bodies that are helping to shape the deployment of EDI within the retail sector:
- GS1
The organization tasked with managing global implementation of the UPC barcode, the organization’s standards have expanded beyond the barcode to encompass other areas of the supply chain, including EDI message definitions, radio frequency identification (RFID) and product data synchronization. - Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)
GDSN allows the secure and continuous data synchronization of product and location information. Retailers and suppliers connect to a selected data pool–managed by a GS1 member–which connects to the GS1 Global Registry®. Suppliers transfer product data and location information to the data pool. Retailers subscribe to only the information they require. - Global Standards Management Process (GSMP)
A forum where GS1 standards are defined and maintained by GS1 and its members–especially retail trade companies. GSMP defines requirements and best practices before establishing industry standards to support electronic commerce and data synchronization. - Global Commerce Initiative (GCI)
GCI is a global user group of manufacturers, retailers and service providers. It established the business rules for a globally standardized model: the global product classification (GPC) model. The model improves the supply chain performance between manufacturers and retailers by the voluntary adoption of industry standards for product group identification. - Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS)
ARTS is a standards body dedicated to the Retail industry. Whereas GS1 standards concentrate on B2B standards, ARTS focuses on application-to-application (A2A) standards, including the Retail Data Model, Unified Point of Service, IXRetail and IXRetail XML standards. UnifiedPOS addresses the need to exchange data between point-of-sale devices and back-office systems.
