HUB UPDATE
DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING
Recent enhancements to the NBG Hub, which also houses its Product Information Management (PIM) system, have enabled Partners to access business critical data more seamlessly than ever before.
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There have been several updates to the NBG Hub over the years to make it easier to access the data and insights it carries. Its most recent incarnation, Hub Version 3, has not only introduced a cleaner interface but has ultimately made critical pricing and product information a lot more prominent. Les Boyle, NBG’s Head of Technology and Systems explains that the latest update, HubV3, is an underlying technology change. “Thanks to a lot of hard work with the platform’s developer, eBiz, we’ve become the first buying group to move from V2 of the Hub to V3, which we’re confident will give our Partners a competitive advantage.” Like most buying groups, NBG is firmly committed to the monitoring and management of its Supplier agreements, including turnover, rebates and pricing with further functionality introduced to aid this. “Partners use the Hub to manage their Supplier turnover and associated rebates, which is vitally important,” says Boyle. “With that in mind, we’ve enhanced the way it can report on Supplier turnover and allow Partners to manage turnover queries through a more interactive process, directly within the Hub. That way, when we submit a Request for Payment, at the end of their rebate period,
“You can ask the new price calendar to show you all price changes imported on a particular date or show which prices go live on each date.“
Les Boyle, NBG Head of Technology and Systems
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Partners can continue to have confidence that the figures are accurate.
“In addition to the core management of Supplier agreements and rebates, as a buying group, it was important for us to recognise that what we need is a central system that offers us much more than a traditional PIM system offering mere product information. Our Partners’ needs from a PIM system are generally centred around product pricing data that allows them to buy and sell more effectively, so that’s become a real focus.” One key change is the introduction of a price calendar, which allows Partners to track Supplier price changes more effectively. Boyle says: “You can ask the new price calendar to show you all price changes imported on a particular date or show which prices go live on each date.
“Supplier price lists should be provided 30 days in advance of the go live date, technical checks are run ahead of importing into the PIM, resulting in accurate data being available to Partners two weeks before the price change is effective. Therefore, allowing Partners to update their businesses in advance of any price changes coming into effect.”
In addition to the price calendar is a new ‘analyse pricing’ function, which enables NBG’s deal negotiators to review price changes by highlighting average price variations as well as line-by-line detail, allowing them to feel confident the prices are correct before they go live. Boyle adds: “The feature supports informed decision-making by allowing negotiators to reject or push back on price changes that do not align with expectations or agreements.”
Boyle points out that the team behind the Hub processes an average of 205,000 product updates a month. “Over the course of the
Left: Les Boyle, Right: Mike Bennett
last 12 months, that was 2.4 million updates. When you look at it like that, you realise how hard it could be for a merchant that doesn’t have access to this system to manage the pricing changes and product updates.” In the longer term, Boyle explains, V3 will also offer NBG more flexibility for integration into other systems. “For a start, we will be able to use APIs – a way in which one computer can talk to another and retrieve data seamlessly in the background. This means that one computer can go into the system and effectively ask ‘what changed overnight, give me that data.’ So that can happen seamlessly without the business having to ask the question manually.”
There are still challenges with that kind of freely transferred data; if the Partner’s system knows that prices have changed, but the people working in the business aren’t aware, they’re not able to react to potential impacts in terms of changing the selling price, units of order etc. “APIs are generally a good thing, even though they can be a double-edged sword, and their use needs to be managed correctly,” he says.
Mike Bennett, Operations Manager at Tamar Trading, believes the real benefit to the Partners is that the price files are managed via Suppliers and the Hub. “That’s the biggest gain we have seen, and it now functions in a really positive way,” he says. “The next step certainly is the API element, but it gets complicated because all our Partners operate on a number of different systems. But we are in a position where we can start to move forward on that front.”
He feels that, from a Partner point of view, the Hub itself is a “phenomenal piece of kit.” “The amount of work that existed before and the number of people involved in managing all that data meant there was always that risk of errors creeping in because you are doing most of it yourself.
“Automating that process, and then being able to check it has made a huge difference to how Partners can run and manage this side of the business.”
January 2025
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