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The Irish Data Pool - Facilitating Quality Product Data  The Irish Data Pool - Facilitating Quality Product DataAn Industry First
Aidan Keane, Finance and IT Director, BWG Foods and Chairman GS1 Ireland
The launch of the Irish Data Pool is a major milestone for GS1 Ireland and the FMCG sector in Ireland. This data pool will radically change the way product data is exchanged between trading partners in the Irish market. Data pools have been operating successfully in most of the larger world economies for many years and have proven to be the most efficient way to electronically exchange product data.
The GS1 Ireland Data Pool Service has the unanimous backing of the major retail groups in the country. It is the first time that a concerted approach has been made to move to the electronic exchange of product data in the Irish FMCG supply chain. The benefits to our industry will be improved product data quality and standards, which is the core of all our business systems, resulting in significant cost and operational savings for the whole of the supply chain.
The launch of the Irish Data Pool is only the first step. The onus is on us all to make the data pool a reality and to make it part of our business processes. This will not be easy as a lot of work is required by both suppliers and retailers to get their data and systems ready for the changeover. I urge you to act now and sign up to the data pool immediately and to start preparing for the changeover.
 Right from the very beginning of the data pool project, GS1 has received tremendous encouragement from our members to push ahead with this development. Looking back it is wonderful to reflect on the unprecedented level of support we have received for the data pool. In particular we all owe a debt of gratitude to the very many people who freely gave their time and energy to this project, to all those who attended our early investigation workshops in the Autumn of 2004, through to the teams that were involved in the selection and evaluation of a data pool provider and finally, to all those involved in the preparation workshops last autumn, a big thank you.The board of GS1 set up a small but very effective Data Pool Steering Group who, along with Jim Bracken, was responsible for ensuring that the data pool would became a reality. The first requirement set by the group was that the data pool must comply with the highest international standards, be able to exchange data with other global data pools and offer the best value for money for the Irish market. This led to the selection of SINFOS as our data pool provider. SINFOS is the largest data pool operator in Europe, has a strong and long track record in this field and is a first class partner to work with.
The committee also stipulated that the data pool had to have the unanimous support and backing of the major retailers in the Irish market. The steering group insisted that this extend beyond retailers just signing up to the data pool and that they needed to be committed to using the data pool as their main source of product data from as early a stage as is possible. Once again we are delighted with the strong response we received back from all retailers, in fact a number are already at very advanced stages in terms of rolling out the data pool to their suppliers later on this year.
I would like to thank all those involved in the establishment of the GS1 Ireland Data Pool Service for the major effort they have put into making this launch a reality. In particular I would like to thank the management team in GS1 Ireland, under its CEO, Jim Bracken, the GS1 Data Pool Steering Group, under the Chairmanship of Tony Minogue from Glanbia and the Board of GS1 Ireland for agreeing to back this project. Finally I would urge you and everyone involved in the Irish supply chain to help make the data pool a success by being a part of it.
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