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EANnet is the industry catalogue of products, which was launched in November 1997 as a means of increasing data synchronisation.

The aim was to achieve an electronic database of products to be maintained by vendors and brokers which retailers and wholesalers could access in order to check specification and search for products.

In reality, at the end of 1999, the industry heavies took a long hard look at the state of play and decided that EANnet was not meeting original expectations on usage and maintenance.

A particular cause of non-regular usage by retailers was the fact that pricing, including deals and promotions, was not included in EANnet. Another impediment reported by some retailers was the access speed to the database.

This is all set to be resolved with the December 2000 rollout of EANnet Phase II.

EAN's supply partner GE is delivering EANnet via a new service GPC* Express and the database being used is a new model. This should eliminate the problems associated with access speed.

The pricing issue is addressed by the facility to record pricing in the EANnet Phase II catalogue, including deals. Whilst initially an optional field in EANnet, it will become mandatory to include pricing in a future upgrade to the system.

The AFBA initiative UBF is still the accepted method of notifying new lines, pack changes and price changes to all grocery accounts other than Franklins.

Woolworths, AIW, Big W, Davids and Campbells Cash `n' Carry currently accept UBF forms exclusively. At the recent Foodweek Conference Woolworths C.E.O. Roger Corbett said that with full usage of EANnet Phase II he hoped that paper based UBF's would eventually be eliminated.

AFBA Chairman Phil Streng told the Australian Food Broker Directory that in fact the UBF software had been launched with the intention of eventually eliminating paper.

"The UBF software will support a module that will upload to EANnet, continuing and strengthening its role as a pseudo EANnet client," said Mr Streng.

"Currently, UBF contains all of the data necessary to load a new product or effect a price increase, and this will assist the industry in gaining a reasonably quick compliance of product data."

Once EANnet Phase II launches in December EAN Australia plans to launch an EANnet accreditation program. Richard Jones of EAN has assumed the newly created position of General Manager-Accreditation Services.

EAN is finalising charges for use of EANnet. Currently free-of-charge, the service will be subject to a small annual registration cost and an annual cost-per-item maintained in the database. Fees will be based on a cost recovery basis only.

Members of the EANnet Phase II working party include Woolworths, Coles, Franklins and Davids. Heinz, Colgate, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Nestle, Kellogg, Kimberley-Clarke, Carter Holt Harvey and the AFBA, which represents 71 food brokers with approximately 500 clients.

The group is keen to see the EANnet system simplify promotional and claims management.

Methods of getting data into EANnet will include online keying, spreadsheet templates provided by EANnet which can extract batch files, EDI, and interfaces such as UBF software.