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September, 2006 Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India |
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Need for speed?
Zip your way through cash counter as retailers accept only bar- coded products.
Coming July 1, get ready to accelerate your way through billing at cash counters of the country's top retailers. Most prominent retailers, from FoodWorld, Spencers and Nilgiris to Pantaloon and Piramyd, have now signed an agreement to accept only products, which are bar-coded at the suppliers' end.
At present, only 70 per cent of the consumer products come from suppliers with EAN barcodes marked on their product packaging. For the rest 30 per cent, retailers themselves affix bar code stickers to ensure efficient billing as well as smooth movement at the back-end, adding to their costs. An EAN bar code is an internationally accepted specification which gives a company an universal country code, followed by the company and product code.
“Consumer billing has been fully automated at retail checkout counters using barcode scanners. Bar-coding enables closer monitoring of stocks at retail outlets and warehouses so that retailers can take quick action to avoid overstocking. It also helps, to monitor demand and develop reliable sales forecasts, based on which suppliers can quickly replenish stocks. Says Gibson Vedamani, CEO of Retailers Association of India
Also, `With common data pools based on EAN barcoding, suppliers will be able to exchange information early, there will be no data miss-match or need to upload data afresh,` he says.
K. Radhakrishnan, Chairman, ECR India, and VP, merchandising, Spencer's, shares a similar thought. `Mandating of EAN Coding by retailers under the auspices of ECR India, is a step towards taking Indian supply chain standards to international levels. It is useful in sensitising not only the suppliers but also some retailers who do not as yet realise the immense benefits that can be derived from this in tracking inventory, apart from the huge savings in cost coming from data accuracy and supplier alignment.` ECR or efficient consumer movement is a globally practised business improvement concept that seeks to respond to consumer needs faster he says.
As of now, all the top consumer goods companies, save a few, barcode their products. The issue is more to do with the smaller and regional suppliers and this agreement is to push them towards bar-coding their goods as well.
Retailers point out that with increasing product volumes and variants, receiving un-barcoded supplies leads to incurring avoidable costs, errors and delays. They also complain of being unable to move towards full automation and linkages between the front-end (the point of sale) and the back-end (warehouse) operations.
Date: 01-May-2006
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