The most challenging problem with data is matching it up when two people as in this picture see what they are both doing is correct and it is accurate but as they are doing it differently, so it is not matching up. So, as a result, today has been a frustrating day for us a supplier to several of our customers who are making a small trial before the trials go extensive cannot get the sales data from our clients in a way that there sales team can use. So we spent most of the day trying to massage the data into a new format that they can use. Barcodes do not work as they are not the sole supplier of the goods. They use a dual system of supplier codes, one internally and an external one which is a group code for a number of products. So what our software has to do is automatically create a secondary supplier code for this supplier which we are doing.
This mismatch of data between what the supplier has is a major problem in point of sale today which significantly affects the entire supply chain, not just the sales data. It hurts how many of us have had months arguing over invoices leading to payment delays.
The other point is because this is a major supplier we are sorting it out but if it were a small supplier no one would bother.
