GS1 New Zealand’s digital products: transforming to suit the needs of members

Many GS1 New Zealand members use our products everyday to identify, capture and share product and location data across supply chains. We know it’s important to members that regular business processes such as sharing data with retailers are quick and easy. 

Dedicated readers may remember mention of GS1 New Zealand’s digital product roadmap in our September 2024 edition of SCAN 2.0. This is a detailed plan that is guiding us over the next few years to deliver product improvements in alignment with member needs. 

“Our digital team has grown to meet the needs of our roadmap, and I’m confident in their skills. We’ve built the roadmap based on your feedback—you need simple, effective products to streamline your business,” Paul Matthews, Chief Information Officer.

Introducing the Product Team at GS1 New Zealand

The Product Team, led by Product Manager, Marcus Coomer, is at the heart of delivering the tools and solutions that help our members connect, collaborate, and grow.

Marcus has been with GS1 New Zealand for 9 years and has seen many changes to GS1 NZ’s products and services in that time. “When we first launched the National Product Catalogue - Rapid this offered a much improved and easier way for members to share their product data with retailers and now I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved with Shared Products. This is another step up and improves the experience for members.”

“I’m really excited about this next phase of development for our digital products. We have a lot of projects in the pipeline and we’re getting some really positive feedback from members on what we’ve achieved so far,” says Marcus.

The next phase of our digital product roadmap

The work programme is not slowing down and the team is excited to continue achieving the targets set out in the digital products roadmap. The next priorities for the team: 

Launching a new MyGS1 member portal: We’ve built a new, modern MyGS1 platform and we’re beginning a large programme of work to migrate users from the current version to the new version. The new interface is more user friendly and streamlines the product set up experience. The migration is happening in cohorts, beginning with a pilot group. Central to this process is the migration of barcode product data from Product Vault, to Allocated Barcodes located within the new MyGS1 member portal. 

One place to access GS1 New Zealand services: We know from feedback that signing into multiple platforms with different names and passwords can be frustrating. To deliver a seamless product experience we will be adding Media Library and ProductRecallNZ to our existing single sign on. This is the first step in our goal of providing members one place to access GS1 services.

These are just a few of the things the team are currently progressing with much more to come.

What’s been delivered?

Simplifying GS1 New Zealand member processes: We’ve heard from you that our invoices didn’t make it clear how to pay, how much to pay, and in what currency, as well as being hard to find and take a lot of clicks to get to payment. GS1 New Zealand invoices have now been updated to a modern format with clearer details and options to complete payment. Your invoices are also easier to find in MyGS1 and the amount of clicks needed to locate them are minimised.

Ordering photography bundles in NPC Rapid: We’ve now made it possible for members to order photography bundles in NPC Rapid. With some supermarkets now accepting up to 7 images in their online stores, this new feature makes it much easier for members to request photography that meets retailer needs.

Improved product data sharing for hardware members: Based on feedback from the hardware sector, we recognised that while they appreciated the ability to store and share data through the National Product Catalogue, the existing experience was not meeting their needs. In response, we developed Shared Products within MyGS1 —an intuitive and efficient solution for sharing product data. All new users, along with 170 existing suppliers, are now successfully using Shared Products.

“Feedback is really valuable to us and helps us to direct our work plan to ensure we are delivering value to our members,” says Marcus.

If you have any feedback on our products and services, please email us at [email protected]