The Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) End-to-End Value Chain & Standards (E2E) initiative held its first bi-annual Steering Committee meeting of 2020 in Lisbon on 11th -12th February and officially launched its Product Data Coalition of Action (CoA). Steering Committee Co-Chairs Barron Witherspoon, Procter & Gamble, and Tom Rose, SPAR International, who will also co-chair the Coalition, kicked off the two-day session alongside CGF Managing Director Peter Freedman, and E2E Director Ruediger Hagedorn.

The launch of the Product Data CoA, the first of the CGF’s new coalitions to be officially launched, is part of the CGF’s intention to further amplify progress in delivering on its strategic priorities, and in finding new ways to drive actions further and faster and involving more external stakeholders. The overall objective of the Product Data CoA is to address weaknesses faced in today’s data exchange processes by ensuring that all products have a unique identification, all IDs can be verified in real time, and all brand owners, retailers and platforms follow the same Global Data Model by 2022. This is to be done in parallel to voluntarily testing the CGF DataPorts concept to facilitate use of new technologies and federated data sharing in the medium term.

The E2E Steering Committee members leveraged the occasion to brainstorm ways to ensure the smooth-running of the CoA.

Commenting on the newly launched CoA, E2E Director Ruediger Hagedorn said, “This is an important step for our E2E Pillar to drive implementation in support of such a vital & foundational business process like Data Exchange. The CoA approach will allow us to clearly focus resources on getting things on the road faster, easier and with determined commitment from Coalition Members”.

As part of the Steering Committee meeting, members also took stock of the work delivered since the last bi-annual meeting held in Silicon Valley in September 2019 and went on to discuss new aspects of E2E activities on learning and innovation. In addition, insights were shared on the various collaborations set for 2020 with partner organisations such as Logyca and the Open Voice Network.

The group then looked in more detail at the True-code and DataPorts projects and how initial trials had provided promising results. The group agreed to push the projects forward running new trials and to report back in the group’s September meeting.

Another topic covered in detail was the work done by GS1 on the several Data Leapfrog Initiatives and which are overseen by the CGF Data Coalition of Action. The group explored marketplace challenges and how to provide the market with fit-for-purpose standards and connections to data and tools to better enable businesses.

Additional topics of focus at the meeting included E2E initiatives on Transportation, Packaging, SpringBoard events and the Future of Fresh.

To find out more about the Product Data CoA and our work on E2E, visit this page, or contact the E2E team at: e2e@theconsumergoodsforum.com. This year’s annual global Product Data CoA event will take place on 25th-27th October in Barcelona, with a lighter interim meeting scheduled to take place on 15th June during the CGF Summit week in London.  Monthly video conferences for all involved will be set up to provide an opportunity to share updates on the CoA.