Becky James of McLane Company talks at U Connect 2011 about her work implementing GDSN.

There’s nothing new about exchanging point of sale (POS) data among retailers and suppliers – also known as the 852 Product Activity Data Transaction Set as part of ANSI’s X12, the official designation for the development and maintenance of EDI standards. But the 852 – and the practice of providing suppliers with a steady stream of data on sales, on-hand, on-order and order receipts so they can better identify items deserving increased service levels and fill rates as well as those targeted for inventory reduction – is still under-utilized.