Sainsbury’s is working on correcting inconsistencies in product data information as part of a wider systems overhaul, company officials said today.

Following the announcement of a deal with IBM for the transformation of its supply chain systems in April, the retailer is focusing on improving product information to meet increasing consumer and regulatory demands.

According to Sainsbury’s trading director Mike Coupe, one of the drivers for the retailer’s renewed interest in quality of data is the introduction of new warehouse management systems and the consequent requirement for better information.

“The necessity for accurate data wasn’t nearly as great four or five years ago as it is now, but keeping up with that change is a very significant piece of work and it requires dynamic interaction between manufacturing companies and our buying teams,” Coupe told Computing.

Problems identified in the supply chain process included the need for warehouse personnel to re-enter data to ensure accuracy related to labelling for nutrition, health and lifestyle, as well as information related to packaging and the environment.

According to a report released today by Cranfield School of Management and the not-for-profit supply chain standards and solutions body GS1 UK, grocery retailers and suppliers can save at least £1bn over the next five years by correcting product data inconsistencies.

The report, carried out with major UK retailers and suppliers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, found discrepancies in 80 per cent of instances where product data held by suppliers was compared with that stored on the supermarkets’ systems.

GS1 is now encouraging collective action from firms to improve their supply chain systems with a view to reducing costs and increasing productivity.

Coupe said the ideal scenario would be to use a common data source, allowing manufacturing companies to work to a set of standards that can be entered into common systems to avoid tasks such as data reviews at warehouses.

“We are implementing the [supply chain] systems from Red Prairie now and that will only work if the information is accurate and updated dynamically,” said Coupe.

The standardisation of data should also bring efficiencies to product data management at the web operation of Sainsbury’s, which reported a 20 per cent increase in sales today, a day after rival Tesco posted a 11 per cent online growth.

Product descriptions to be used in-store are typically around 48 characters long, but customers want more information in online retail, says Coupe, so the firm employs a team to re-write the descriptions for use on the web.

“That is one of the problems we are trying to solve – we would like to have a standardised description that carries all the info we would want online but which could also be broken down into information for a store shelf label,” he said.

According to Coupe, product data at Sainsbury’s is currently held in three different systems and tends to be disparate, so the aim is to eventually have a central product description depository with information provided by manufacturing companies to an agreed standard.

“Given the overall health of the grocery retailing industry, it was surprising to discover such a high level of poor quality product data being held by retailers. Bad data not only impacts UK retailers and suppliers’ profits but also customer satisfaction which is the lifeblood of any business," said Cranfield’s Richard Wilding.

"Empty shelves, missing allergy information and incorrect prices on display are all highly frustrating for consumers but could be avoided if UK retailers and their suppliers were to adopt a global industry standard for product data," Wilding continued.

He added: "As online shopping continues to rise and consumers are unable to physically handle the product, the information provided on web sites is increasingly important for making informed decisions.

"In the future, data quality will become essential to the success of retailing organisations.”