Back in July 2016, 12 leading grocery retailers and brands signed an industry charter, announcing their commitment to move to a single solution for managing and exchanging product data. 

For too long, UK retail had been left behind. Other countries had been quicker to adopt new technologies, while the UK retail landscape remained usually slow and fragmented. There was no single, standardised process for sharing product data and data that was submitted was not trusted, resulting in time wasted validating the data many times. 

This resulted in losses of up to £200m annually through supply chain inefficiencies and meant that the UK grocery market struggled to innovate. Retailers were not able to keep up with consumer expectations of a simple, seamless, and quick shopping experience, that they experienced from other apps, sectors, and services, and adapting quickly to new legislation, such as EU 1169, Natasha’s Law and HFSS, was a challenge.

The problem as too big to solve alone and required a collaborative approach with common aims to support the industry as whole. Over the following two years, GS1 UK facilitated talks between the 12 leading grocery retailers and brands, as they worked together to develop a standardised industry solution, which became productDNA. 

productDNA provide a single catalogue of high-quality, independently verified data that everyone can trust. It uses one shared language to describe and process products, so there is no confusion between retailers and brands as to what information is required. 

As a secure, cloud-based platform, productDNA enables master data to be accessed anywhere at any time and is built to evolve with every changing industry needs. 

productDNA is built on three core components:

Industry agreed data model | The standardised data model is built on GS1 standards and enables the entire retail industry to use a single common language to describe and process products. This reduces confusion as to what information is required from the brand to launch a product and ensures all retailers are asking for the same information to prevent data duplication and potential errors.

Intuitive product catalogue | The product catalogue is where all master product data is stored and shared and includes everything from basic new-line data to allergen and environmental information. The intuitive user interface provided prompts to the brands to help explain exactly what information is required and can capture information via the UI, Excel, API or GDSN. 

Product verification services | There are two verification services, to ensure that all data in the platform is accurate to promote industry-wide trust. The first is an artwork verification to confirm all information on the product packaging is correct and that the barcode is compliant with GS1 standards. The second is a physical check of the product to confirm that the data in the productDNA platform, is accurate against the final product. 

productDNA has already been adopted by Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose & Partners, and Ocado – making up more than 60 per cent of UK grocers. The GS1 UK team are also in conversations with many other grocers, who we are looking to onboard in the near future. 

There are also a wide range of brands, both small and large, who have adopted the industry’s standardised product data solution and are already seeing the benefits of using the service. This includes: Nestlé, Unilever, General Mills, P&G, Mondelez, Coca-Cola European Partners, Candy Kittens, SC Jonson, Mallow & Marsh, Oppo Brothers, itsu [grocery], and many more.

The disruption of conventional retail has meant that the industry has had to embrace e-commerce like never before, the productDNA platform – where product information can be entered once in a standardised way and shared multiple times between retailers and suppliers – has been a perfect tool in the rush towards digitalisation.

productDNA advisory group formed with representatives from across the world of retail including Nestlé, Mondelez, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

The advisory group will sit four times a year, in line with the GS1 UK supervisory board, which is made up of representatives from across the world of retail. Members of the group already include Nestlé, Mondelēz, Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

The advisory group set a target that 90% of grocery retailers and brands will be using productDNA by the end of 2024.

To make productDNA accessible to all, our pricing structure is based on your company turnover. Please get in touch with the productDNA team on 020 3318 0633 or email productdna@gs1uk.org to get a pricing estimate for your company. 

As a GS1 UK member, you automatically get access to My Numberbank free of charge as part of your membership. This service allows you to allocate your product identifiers or GTINs to your products and assign seven core product attributes, including product name, main brand, sub-brand, description, web link to the product, manufacturer’s part number (MPU) and stock keeping unit (SKU).

My Numberbank is increasingly used by online retailers, online marketplaces, and healthcare catalogue providers to check the validity of the GTIN used in their product catalogues.

productDNA defines and manages far more product data. At launch there were 150 data attributes for products across the grocery sector, including product data such as dimensions, weight and volume, as well as ingredients, nutritional values and allergen information. 

Additionally, productDNA also allows brands and retailers to share this product data between them in a controlled manner, respecting commercial agreements.

For decades product data sharing in UK retail has been fragmented.

The existing process brands go through to list their product with a retailer is cumbersome, inefficient and costly for suppliers. The end result often leads to misrepresentation of the brand's products to their customers.
 
At the same time retailers are building unnecessary costly processes to prevent poor data quality and manage multiple data sources. These often lead to inconsistencies and struggle to improve the richness of the product data required to meet increased legislative and customer demands.
 
To address the shared challenges of promoting healthy diets and sustainable lifestyles its time for an industry solution, built by the industry, for the industry and not for commercial gain.