Lawrenceville, NJ, June 10--UCCnet, a not-for-profit organization that provides item registry and synchronization services, announced today that The Home Depot will begin implementing the organization's item registration and synchronization services for its more than 1,500 stores located in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico this year. Additionally, Home Depot is in the process of requesting its suppliers subscribe to UCCnet to begin the process of implementing UCCnet's item registration and data synchronization services.
The Home Depot will register location data in the UCCnet GLOBALregistry, an industry-supported repository for standardized item, location, and trading partner data. Home Depot's suppliers will also register item data in the GLOBALregistry. Once registered, UCCnet checks the data for compliance to industry standards. Home Depot will then use UCCnet's item synchronization service to synchronize the registry-compliant data with its suppliers, ensuring that all suppliers are using identical, up-to-date, standards-compliant data.
"Every trading partner of Home Depot will implement these common data standards to help reduce errors and supply chain costs. This is a critical industry initiative, and that is why there is such an unprecedented level of support from major retailers and suppliers in the industry," said Mark Healy, Senior Director of Merchandising Operations for Home Depot.
"The benefits of subscribing to UCCnet's GLOBALregistry will make Home Depot's supply chain even more efficient and effective," said Rhonda B. Horn, Vice President of Business Development for UCCnet. "Home Depot is demonstrating true industry leadership by joining the 600 other supply and demand side trading partners as members of the UCCnet community."
An industry study conducted by A.T. Kearney estimated that $40 billion, or 3.5 percent, of total sales lost each year are due to supply chain information inefficiencies. Specifically, the study showed that 30 percent of items in retail catalogs have data errors, which cost between $60 and $80 each and consume 25 minutes of manual correction per SKU. Other findings revealed that 60 percent of all invoices generated errors and 43 percent of all invoices resulted in deductions.
UCCnet's services will enable suppliers and their retail partners to reduce costly administrative errors in invoice pricing, purchase orders, product delivery and scanning accuracy. In addition, companies will be able to increase the speed of getting new products to market and facilitate changes to existing item information. Synchronized data in a standard format also provides a solid foundation for realizing the true cost savings value of more advanced e-commerce tools such as scan-based trading and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR).
