Good supply chain management is essential for operational efficiency and company success. Keeping track of all goods in separate locations is a big job. Sharing supply chain information across trading partners spread throughout the country, if not throughout the world, is an even more complicated job.

GS1 Australia’s Locatenet and National Product Catalogue offer the best solution for some of these issues to be met. Working with the Australian National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA), GS1 Australia’s Locatenet system is a central repository enabling the exchange of location information, including Global Location Numbers (GLNs) between trading partners in the healthcare sector. It is a requirement for Australian companies to use the National Product Catalogue (NPC). The enhancements made to the GS1 Australia Locatenet system has enhanced the use of the NPC.

“By ensuring that the Locatenet system is fit for purpose in Healthcare, should provide for greater industry adoption,” Steven Pereira, CIO of GS1 Australia explained. “At a holistic level, better location information in Healthcare, and other sectors, is fundamental for supplychain efficiencies.”

In the engagement with Mitrais, GS1 Australia took the opportunity to make improvements to the Locatenet system, GS1 Australia then turned its sights to enhance the NPC, namely it’s Catalogue Validator and the Catalogue Sync features.

The Catalogue Validator, as the name implies, is responsible for validating the products being entered into the catalogue. The complementing Catalogue Sync feature prevents GLN duplications. Together, they ensure the database, with data entered by suppliers, remains accurate and clean before it is made available for the suppliers’ trading partners.

The development on these features involved more than 500 validation rules which included developing additional reports such as Supplier and Recipient reports, as well as Data Quality KPI and Trend Analysis/Reporting.

“Our plan is to roll these solutions out to our customers in the August/ September timeframe, and working with Mitrais we are confident in achieving this result,” said Steven. Steven expressed his satisfaction with offshore software development services provider Mitrais, particularly on the flexible remote/onsite working arrangements and knowledgeable consultants assisting with GS1 Australia’s various projects.

“In our IT resource model, we have a fixed team of FTE (Full Time Employees) working with partners like Mitrais. We are able to increase our throughput depending on the work and projects we received from the business,” Steven explained. “As these projects are completed we are able to flex downwards in resource requirements to our base line staff levels without having to carry any unnecessary overhead. The agility and the breadth of knowledge of the team at Mitrais has assisted our IT Business deliver the business software and applications required; in high quality, in timeliness and costs. The work efforts thus far have been exemplary.”

Over the next six to twelve months the Catalogue Sync and Validator projects will be one of the team’s major focuses. On top of this, GS1 Australia will be embarking on a major internal IT Transformation Project called Project Voyager. This will involve a shift of their internal Office/ Exchange services to the Cloud (O365) as well as an implementation of a new CRM and upgrade of our ERP system Dynamics AX which is planned over the next 12-24 months.