Case studies
Karl's Bakery rolls out GS1 System for success (October 2006)
When it comes to croissants and ciabatta, Karl Raberger and his dedicated team at Queensland's Karl's Good Stuff are the experts. But when the baker faced an eight day deadline to ready itself for electronic trade, Karl's called in expert help from GS1 Australia's EANnet® specialists.
The Karl's Good Stuff success story began in 1988 when Karl Raberger saw an opportunity for his continental breads in a relatively untapped market.
By 1994, Karl's Good Stuff products were being distributed to Coles and Bi-Lo supermarkets and, today, Karl's Good Stuff produces some 500,000 units per week as well as 45,000 units of Turkish bread, which are sold throughout southeast Queensland.
Among the retailers carrying Karl's bread is supermarket giant, Coles, which is committed to improving its inventory control and supply chain administration by trading electronically with suppliers. Coles is eliminating paper-based forms and manual data input with the use of EANnet, an online synchronisation service already utilised by a strong community of over 1,000 vendors and suppliers.
As a major supplier to Coles, Karl's Good Stuff was asked to share data via EANnet. Karl's daughter and a director of the business, Dianna Kaliviotis, said she attended a one-day EANnet information seminar in Sydney after the request from Coles.
"The project appeared to be quite involved and, given our time constraints, I felt overwhelmed after the seminar. I decided to engage GS1 Australia to assist us on site to become compliant," she said.
The bakery was working to a tight deadline and needed to be EANnet Ready™ within just eight days. With the help of GS1 Australia Professional Services, there was minimal interruption to the bakery's staff and management's daily business processes.
GS1 Australia dedicated a Professional Services Advisor to assist Karl's Good Stuff on site.
"Our adviser gave us a list of tasks prior to coming out and we liaised in preparation prior to that visit," Ms Kaliviotis said. "Then, when we met, we went through the entire process together."
This preparation meant bakery staff members were well prepared before beginning the project, maximising use of the advisor's time and speeding progress.
Working with the GS1 Professional Services Advisor over the next eight days, the team at Karl's Good Stuff contributed about two days in total to the project but were not required to spend the full eight-day period on the project. Also, while Professional Services had allocated eight days to the project, the actual time they spent on it amounted to just three days, significantly reducing the cost to the bakery.
"Having a dedicated GS1 advisor was the most beneficial part of the project because, in a group off-site, you forget to ask the relevant questions and often do not relate the information to your workplace. We actually worked together with live data and the questions arose directly as a result of that process," Ms Kaliviotis said.
The EANnet implementation helped the bakery consolidate its item and pricing data in a central spreadsheet that became the master data to be uploaded to EANnet. The data was cleansed and validated by GS1 Australia Professional Services to ensure it met the needs of the bakery's trading partners and that it conformed to EANnet data quality standards and formats.
The GS1 Australia Professional Services Advisor performed the initial load of data on EANnet using the Browser Upload Service to create Karl's Good Stuff's EANnet Catalogue. He also reviewed the EANnet Data Load Status Report to verify that the upload had been successful.
Once the data validation process was complete and Retailer Vendor Identifiers (supplier codes) for each of the bakery's EANnet trading partners had been sourced, GS1 Australia Professional Services granted trading partners access to Karl's Good Stuff EANnet Catalogue, making the bakery EANnet Ready.
GS1 Australia Professional Services also trained the team at Karl's Good Stuff in how to maintain their EANnet Catalogue so that their trading partners always have the latest information on price changes and new products accurately and on time.
"We are now compliant with Coles' and Bi Lo's expectations and that was the aim of the EANnet implementation. GS1 Australia were very professional and extremely helpful. The cost of using their service was well worthwhile as I would imagine, without them on site, we would have wasted a lot of valuable time," Ms Kaliviotis said.
"I would advise anyone needing to set up their system to ask for a quote from GS1 Australia before trying to set this up alone or with an outside contractor. It is well worth the money spent," she said.
Karl's Good Stuff Bakery has been a member of GS1 Australia since 1988.
