As the Internet slowly carves a place in the day to day running of food businesses, B2B consumer-packaged goods marketplace Transora, one of the ongoing survivors in a difficult environment, has formed an alliance with GlobalNetXchange (GNX), a B2B marketplace for the retail industry, to jointly develop, market and sell data synchronisation services.
The new services aim to meet the guidelines developed by the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) and Global Standards Management Process (GSMP).
Beginning immediately, GNX retailers will access core product data from multiple manufacturers via the Transora Data Catalogue to synchronise with their own internal systems via GNX.
According to a joint statement this week, GNX and Transora will work together to define, develop and implement an inter-operable system that supports retailer-specific data attributes within a machine-to-machine environment.
"Transora's role as the leading data pool for large CPG manufacturers complements GNX's partnership with leading retailers, allowing each company to build on its unique strengths to create value for the industry," said Joe Laughlin, chief executive officer of GNX.
"As recently as the last GCI Board Meeting, the CPG industry leadership encouraged the exchanges to collaborate to further the GCI vision for interoperability in data synchronisation," said Antony Burgmans, chairman of Unilever and co-chair of the GCI Board. "This agreement is a milestone in our industry's efforts to realise the combined vision of the GCI and EAN.UCC models for data synchronisation. Transora and GNX are well-positioned to make this vision a reality."
"This agreement reinforces the importance of collaboration between retailers and manufacturers in delivering the vision of data synchronization for the benefit of the end consumer," added Kerry Clark, vice chairman of Procter & Gamble.