Another spreadsheet from a customer
A customer's sustainability team sends a spreadsheet. For each of the forty products you supply them, they want the unit weight, the material type, the proportion of recycled content, any plastic windows or coatings and their weights, and the country of manufacture. Another customer sends a different template with the same questions in a different order, and a third wants it in their supplier portal.
Somebody in technical works through each one, pulling specs from the MIS, calculating weights from board grammage and blank size, and weighing samples from the warehouse. It takes weeks, and next year it happens again.
The data exists but not in one place
Most of what customers ask for can be derived from your specifications: blank size and board grammage give weight, the board specification gives material and recycled content from the mill, and the spec lists windows, coatings and adhesives. But it is spread across the MIS, mill certificates and technical files, and nobody has ever assembled it per product.
- Unit weights are calculated by hand for each request.
- Recycled content comes from mill declarations filed elsewhere.
- Windows, coatings and adhesives are in spec notes, not fields.
- Each customer uses a different template or portal.
- The same product is researched again for every request.
The obligations themselves sit with your customers and depend on their situation. What you provide is accurate data about what you supply, and that is the part that can be organised.
What the requests cost
Answering data requests by hand ties up technical staff who are needed for quality and development work. Answers given in a hurry may be inconsistent between customers or between years, which undermines trust. Slow responses delay your customers' own reporting and make you look harder to work with than a competitor who answers quickly. And the volume of requests is unlikely to fall.
A product data record we build
- For each product, the weight is calculated from the specification: blank area, board or substrate grammage, and any components such as windows, handles or inserts.
- Material composition is recorded per component, with recycled content and other attributes taken from your mills' and suppliers' declarations, which are stored and linked with their dates.
- Calculated weights can be checked against sample weights, and any difference beyond a tolerance you set is flagged for technical to review.
- Each customer's template is mapped once to the product data fields, so filling it is an export rather than a research project.
- Where customers use supplier portals with an upload format, the export is produced in that format.
- When a specification or a mill declaration changes, affected products are updated and marked, so the next submission reflects the change.
| Data point | Source | How it is kept current |
|---|---|---|
| Unit weight | Specification and grammage | Recalculated on spec change |
| Material type | Board or substrate spec | Linked to spec version |
| Recycled content | Mill or supplier declaration | Declaration date tracked |
| Components | Spec, as separate fields | Updated with the spec |
| Check weight | Sample weighed | Difference flagged |
Data requests, answered from a record
Customer requests become an export and a review rather than weeks of work. Answers are consistent across customers and years because they come from one record. Technical staff check exceptions instead of calculating everything. And you can offer customers data proactively, which is increasingly something buyers look for when choosing a packaging supplier.
Are data requests taking over?
- Customers send packaging data spreadsheets regularly.
- Unit weights are calculated by hand for each request.
- Mill declarations are filed separately from product specs.
- Answers to the same question have differed between customers.
- Technical staff lose weeks a year to these requests.