SOA enables P&G to re-use more code

BEA Systems Inc., recently acquired by Oracle Corp., announced that Procter & Gamble had implemented a service-oriented architecture (SOA) running on BEA technologies.

At the front end is a new on-line workspace, designed to act as a portal to the company’s information and knowledge. Initially rolled out to some 2000 P&G users, the workspace is intended at term (2010) to provide decision-support information to more than 30000 users.

At the back end, BEA AquaLogic systems provide the foundation for P&G’s new service-oriented architecture: data sourcing and serving, integration and messaging, and a security layer to protect confidential and sensitive information.

Our vision is a fundamental transformation of the way we operate: using innovative technologies to help us work smarter, faster and more efficiently. BEA is an important contributor to that vision.
Filippo Passerini, CIO and Global Services Officer, Procter & Gamble.

Computerweekly reports that Procter & Gamble expect the new BEA platform to enable them to significantly leverage existing IT application investment through increased code re-use.

The BEA SOA platform allows P&G to integrate existing business applications, from SAP to custom-built tools in J2E and .net. Applications and code modules are catalogued and then made available as services through the portal to enable re-use by other parts of the business.

Terry McFadden, P&G’s associate director for enterprise architecture, said in the initial rollout to the 2000 pilot users, the company had achieved up to 25% re-use of internally developed code. P&G expects at term to be able to re-use up to half of its internally developed application code as it rolls out SOA across its business.

We have a myriad of businesses and business units in the organisation, but many require the same information and by implementing an SOA it means we can develop functionality with re-use in mind to cut application development costs.
Terry McFadden, Associate Director for Enterprise Architecture, Procter & Gamble.

Searching the Internet for FMCG products

Shoppers use the Internet more and more for searching information before they buy – technical details, price comparisons, reviews from previous purchasers, etc. But now it seems that it’s not just about consumer electronics and big-money items like cars… there are actually a lot of consumers out there who are using the Internet to search for FMCG products.

Findings from a new research study called “The Digital Shelf” by comScore, Yahoo, Proctor & Gamble and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), show significant use of the Internet to search for consumer packaged goods, and suggest correlation between online activity and offline purchase behaviour, lending credibility to the argument that there may be significant brand-building and sales-growth opportunities in search marketing.

Categories studied included baby care, personal care, home care, and packaged food. In the three months of the study, food product searches dominated, but searches for baby products and personal care products were also significant, with the majority of searches motivated by product research and the hope of finding help in making a purchase decision.

Data synchronisation helps Nestlé get to market faster

Nestlé, for some time now an industry champion of data synchronisation and standardised product data, is touting the benefits it is seeing come out of the initiative.

Cited case in point: Nestlé’s move to bring the successful Polish brand Winiary and its range of soups, stocks, sauces and desserts to the UK (see article in the Guardian).

As reported in an article at Food Manufacture, Nestlé was able to use its 1SYNC global data synchronisation (GDS) capability to accelerate the UK launch of Winiary.

According to Chris Tyas, Supply Chain Director for Nestlé UK and Ireland, “We were able to get [Winiary] to market very quickly because we were able to extract all the data straight out of our systems in Poland.”

As the Winiary range was to be launched in the UK as-is, in the original Polish packaging with only an “over sticker” applied with details in English, this meant the Polish product data could be supplied as-is to UK retailers.

“The important thing in this is speed to market and we were able to get the product into the market place very, very quickly and when it was seen to be a success, to extend the range in June.”

Tyas, who is also vice chairman of the GS1 UK data synchronisation group, explained that “1Sync provides us with the ability to take information from our systems and translate those into any globally compliant tool, be it retailer specific or a public data pool like that of GS1.”

Last December, Nestlé Europe, Procter & Gamble and the Metro Group announced (pdf) the go-live of item data exchange through the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN), connecting together the SINFOS data pool used by Metro Group and the 1SYNC (formerly Transora and UCCnet) data pool used by Nestlé Europe and P&G.

Metro Group to penalise RFID non-compliance

With the holiday period over and a return to business-as-usual, I found myself reading a number of posts concerning retail RFID on Evan Schuman’s blog StorefrontBacktalk, notably Metro Group’s decision to put some muscle behind its RFID programme by penalising suppliers who fail to comply with its requirements.

It’s been reported elsewhere (e.g. RFID Update) about Metro stepping up its RFID deployment plans:

• Full deployment at 200 locations in Germany
• Implementation rate of approx 10 locations per week
• 650 suppliers mandated to play ball by early 2008

Certainly this echoes other RFID announcements e.g. that of Wal-Mart, but what Evan Schuman and others (e.g. RetailWire, RFID Update) underline as going a step further than even Wal-Mart, is Metro’s intention to fine non-compliant suppliers. Any supplier failing to meet Metro’s contractual requirements regarding tagged pallets will be invoiced additional handling charges.

I haven’t yet found any detail about the level of RFID tagging required by Metro, but I would assume we are talking pallet and case tagging but not SKU tagging.

Of course whether or not mandatory RFID actually gets entrenched in supplier contracts will depend on the next round of contract negociations. Metro Group has muscle with its suppliers, that’s clear, but the cost to suppliers of implementing tagging will be high. Some suppliers have already bought into the benefits of RFID (e.g. Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and other majors who participated in the Metro pilot), but others may not be so keen. Remains to be seen.