Trading partner performance

Trading partner performance is vital to the success of any business. Many companies seek to improve this performance by setting goals for the relationship, sharing data with trading partners and monitoring results over time. Unfortunately, no industry-standard approaches to calculating metrics values and communicating results have been available in the past. As a result, it has been difficult for multiple organizations to arrive at the same answer when performing their calculations, or to compare their performance across trading relationships – leading to confusion, disagreement and reduced opportunities for collaboration. Trading partner performance management standards can yield greater value and productivity from scorecarding and other performance assessment activities. Trading Partner Performance Management (TPPM) is a GS1 standard that provides a balanced set of 17 standard measures across sales, supply chain and operations areas of the business. These measures are compatible with the GCI Global Scorecard Business Measures.

In any particular relationship, it is unlikely that all of the TPPM measures will be used. On the other hand, there may be additional measures that are unique to one organization or trading relationship. Most companies select a foundation set of values to monitor the basics of business performance, supplemented by one or two measures that correspond to strategic initiatives. GS1 TPPM also defines an XML messaging protocol for the exchange of trading partner goals and results using the standard measure definitions, greatly increasing the efficiency of sharing performance information.

The TPPM specification allows data sharing at virtually any level of detail. However, to reduce complexity, most trading relationships will select the minimum number of data points that can describe the health of the business. Once they identify an issue or opportunity through the trading partner performance measures, buyers and sellers can “drill down” to transaction data (exchanged through other GS1 standards) to investigate in more detail.

• GS1 TPPM Standard: The GS1 Community Room hosts the TPPM work group document library ,which includes the business requirements document, business message specification, and other resources.
• Setting Priorities: The Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) has published a vision of how consumer needs could evolve over the next several years, and how the industry should adopt new ways of working together (and enhanced information sharing) to respond. The document is available at www.gci-net.org/gci/content/e29/e1525
• Gaining Organizational Commitment: The New Ways of Working Together initiative provides a number of resources at www.gmaonline.org/industryaffairs/newways.htm, including an industry framework document, a guide to developing business cases and a comprehensive study on out-of-stock reduction.
• Joint Business Planning:An overview of VICS CPFR
• Measure Selection: The GCI Global Scorecard business measures that form the basis for the GS1 TPPM measure set can be found www.globalscorecard.net.
• Data Alignment: More information about the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) and GS1 Global Product Classification (GPC)