ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs. Version 1

Transcription

1 ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Version 1

2 CONTENTS Introduction What is ECCnet Item Certification? What is the purpose of this service? What business issue is being addressed? How will this service help my business? Who is driving this service? Why does my organization have to participate in this service? What specific labelling information is being collected?... 4 Get Started How do I subscribe to ECCnet Item Certification? What s involved for my organization? How much will this initiative cost my organization? Which browsers are supported by the Item Certification tool?... 5 Using the service Where do I sign in to use ECCnet Item Certification? I m having trouble signing in How do I start certifying my products? Can I automate the certification of my products? What happens to this product data? Can an end user edit or copy it without my knowledge? How can I report an issue or suggest an improvement to this service?... 7 Product-Related FAQs Which products should I review using ECCnet Item Certification? What are the product statuses? What is the origin of the data and images captured for this service? Why do some nutritional fields show 0, and others are blank? Why are only certain allergens listed? Government agencies sometimes request changes to our product labels. How will this service help me with these requests? Why are certain fields view-only and uneditable? If the product information doesn t match the product label how do I make this change? I found an error in the nutritional data after I certified the product. How can I fix such errors?... 8 ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 2 of 9

3 Introduction 1. What is ECCnet Item Certification? ECCnet Item Certification is an online, central source of accurate and trusted product-related nutritional data and images. This information is certified by brand owners and then made available to trading partners using a publication and subscription process consistent with the trading partner experience in ECCnet Registry, Canada s national product registry. 2. What is the purpose of this service? The purpose of ECCnet Item Certification is to enable business to manage their brand by sharing authorized product nutritional data and images. This service provides a true source of accurate nutritional data. Brand owners use this service to certify product data as it relates to the latest version of their products. Many products have multiple versions, with varying ingredients, allergens, or nutritional components. This service makes it possible to publish and access the latest marketing and nutritional information. 3. What business issue is being addressed? Canadian businesses are facing increasing demands from trading partners, consumers and governments for marketing and nutritional information about their products; however, there is currently no publicly accessible single source of truth where manufacturers can publish accurate nutritional information for their products. As a result, trading partners, consumers and governments turn to third party sources to access product information, which has not been validated and is often inaccurate. This inaccurate product information places brand owners at risk. For example, research conducted by GS1 and Capgemini confirmed: Only 9% of mobile phone scans returned the correct product description when compared with the brand owner s source data. 75% of scans returned absolutely no product information at all and 87% of scans returned no product image. Even when all of the information was returned, product information was incorrect 1 in 5 times. ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 3 of 9

4 4. How will this service help my business? ECCnet Item Certification enables your business to: ensure that accurate information about its products is communicated provide perpetually-cleansed item level nutritional information and images to trading partners access a 24/7 central source of product nutritional data and images for sales, training, and other operational functions populate ecommerce platforms with the information that your consumers demand. 5. Who is driving this service? Through the leadership and collaboration of the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG), and Food and Consumer Products of Canada (FCPC), the Canadian retail grocery industry has launched an item level nutritional product data initiative. This initiative establishes the highly-demanded, single source of truth for marketing and nutritional information through the ECCnet Item Certification service. 6. Why does my organization have to participate in this service? Your grocery retail partner has requested your participation to certify the accuracy of your data. Certification is in your interest to ensure that your product data is accurate, to better control your brand, and to safeguard your brand reputation. 7. What specific labelling information is being collected? ECCnet Item Certification requires product/brand owners to certify data accuracy in the following areas: Product details Nutrition facts (as it relates to the nutritional panel on the product) Ingredients (as it relates to the ingredients label on the product) A subset of common allergens Product Certifications and claims (kosher, organic, halal, ACS, MSC). Get Started 8. How do I subscribe to ECCnet Item Certification? As a GS1 Canada member, your organization is eligible to subscribe to the ECCnet Item Certification service. Follow these steps to subscribe to this service: ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 4 of 9

5 a. The Catalogue Captain must use ECCnet ProSYNC to designate an ECCnet Item Certification Administrator. (The Administrator will be responsible for managing your organization s ECCnet Item Certification processes) b. The Administrator must subscribe to ECCnet Item Certification, accept the terms of use, and specify how data will be loaded. c. The administrator must use ECCnet Item Certification to add approvers and reviewers. 9. What s involved for my organization? The Item Certification service requires individuals in your organization to fulfill the following roles and responsibilities: Existing Role Catalogue Captain Responsibilities Assign an Administrator to oversee the ECCnet Item Certification service The following roles will need to be created and assigned: New Role Administrator Reviewer Approver Responsibilities Adds and maintains approvers and reviewers Validates all images and related information on product details, nutrition facts, ingredients, allergens and product certifications, for every product listed in the service Certifies product details after they are reviewed by reviewers. Upon certification, the nutritional data for a product is ready to be published to retail partners. * GS1 Canada recommends that a different individual be assigned to each of these roles; however, one individual may hold the role of Administrator, Reviewer and Approver. 10. How much will this initiative cost my organization? As a not-for-profit organization, GS1 Canada operates on a cost-recovery basis. Fees are based on an organization s annual sales revenue in Canadian dollars. Fees are also based on augmenting existing industry protocol for Image & Validation services with product nutrition information, based on a product submission. Fees will be reassessed on a periodic basis to ensure continued cost recovery. The Fee Schedule can be found at Which browsers are supported by the Item Certification tool? Supported browsers for this tool include Internet Explorer v9, Chrome v22, Firefox v16, Safari v6. Using the service ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 5 of 9

6 12. Where do I sign in to use ECCnet Item Certification? Go to I m having trouble signing in. Reviewers and Approvers: Contact your organization s ECCnet Item Certification Administrator. Administrators: ItemCertificationSupport@gs1ca.org. 14. How do I start certifying my products? Sign in to the ECCnet Item Certification. You will see a list of your organization s products. From the Status column: Reviewers: Look for products with Verified status. Click the Product description to review details for each product. Review all product information and images for these products to ensure they are accurate and complete. When you finish your review and submit the product for approval, the status changes to Reviewed. Approvers: Look for products with Reviewed status. Click the Product descritpion to review details for each product. If you are satisfied that all details are accurate, go to the Certify tab to certify the product. 15. Can I automate the certification of my products? The objective of this service is to ensure that data and images are certified by the brand owner. This requires the brand owner to individually verify the data and images. This ensures that accurate and complete data is made available to trading partners. 16. What happens to this product data? Can an end user edit or copy it without my knowledge? ECCnet Item Certification shares the guiding principles of ECCnet Registry: The Brand Owners own the data. Published data will only be made available to trading partners in accordance with pre-existing publishing rules already in place in accordance to ECCnet Registry rules. Brand Owners are responsible for data accuracy and any liability that they may incur from use of the data they certified. They are responsible for arbitrating any questions that may be asked about that data. Brand Owners are only responsible for certifying their data. Once their data is certified and transferred to trading partner(s), the Brand Owner s liability ends. Should a trading partner leverage the certified data in an unintended way or change the data, it is not the responsibility of the certifying Brand Owner. ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 6 of 9

7 17. How can I report an issue or suggest an improvement to this service? We value your feedback. Please ItemCertificationSupport@gs1ca,org Product-Related FAQs 18. Which products should I review using ECCnet Item Certification? Reviewers: Search for products with the status Verified. Approvers: Search for products with the status Reviewed. 19. What are the product statuses? Loaded: Product data and related images have been loaded, are being reviewed by GS1 Canada for data consistency, and will soon be made available for your review and set to status as verified. Verified: Product data and related images have been successfully loaded into ECCnet Item Certification and are now ready for Review. Reviewers are sent an notifying them to sign into the service to review the products. Reviewed: Product data and related images are ready for Approvers. Approvers are sent an notifying them that products have been reviewed and are ready for the Approvers. Certified: Products have been certified by Approvers. 20. What is the origin of the data and images captured for this service? As part of a jumpstart process, GS1 Canada initially captured item level marketing and nutritional data and images (national brand and private label products) for 37,000 products and loaded this information to ECCnet Item Certification for brand owner certification. 21. Why do some nutritional fields show 0, and others are blank? If a product s nutritional label shows 0 as the indicated value, the corresponding field in ECCnet Item Certification shows 0 as the value. If nutritional labels do not show any value at all, these fields are left blank. When a mandatory field in the application does not have a value, a 0 is entered. For example, if the nutritional label shows 0 g of sugar, the sugar field will have a 0 in it. If sugar is not shown on the label at all, then the sugar field is left blank (unless it is a mandatory field, in which case the value in the field will be 0 ). ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 7 of 9

8 22. Why are only certain allergens listed? The attributes for allergens, ingredients and nutritional product data captured in ECCnet Item Certification are based on current Health Canada requirements for package labeling, and were specified based on agreement of the GS1 Canada Item Level Nutritional Workgroup. In most cases, allergen information will not be included in ECCnet Item Certification unless you have populated allergen fields in ECCnet ProSYNC. It is the brand owner s responsibility to populate and verify respective product allergen and claims information. 23. Government agencies sometimes request changes to our product labels. How will this service help me with these requests? Industry workgroups facilitated by GS1 Canada monitor Health Canada requirements. Should future attribute changes be suggested by these groups due to requirements stipulated by governments or otherwise they will be subject to a vote from the GS1 Canada Item Level Nutritional Workgroup. Should changes be approved, GS1 Canada will provide you appropriate lead time to accommodate any activities that will be required (such as new product images and product re-certification). 24. Why are certain fields view-only and uneditable? If you cannot edit a field, it is because some fields cannot be modified, such as the GTIN and GLN. They are the unique identifiers of the product and have already been registered with GS1 Canada by your organization. 25. If the product information doesn t match the product label how do I make this change? You can modify any information in editable fields. (Certain fields cannot be modified, such as GTINs and GLNs) Note that the nutritional and ingredient data you enter must match the related image. If the image does not reflect that of your product label, you must resubmit the product to ECCnet I&V for updating. 26. I found an error in the nutritional data after I certified the product. How can I fix such errors? The purpose of the Certification step in the process is to ensure that the product information is accurate and no longer requires changes. As such, once the product has been certified, the final stamp of approval has been provided by the brand owner. As a result, no further changes can be made to the particular product version. ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 8 of 9

9 If you need to correct an error, please contact GS1 Canada with the requested change and product GTIN at ECCnet Item Certification GS1 Canada Member FAQs Page 9 of 9