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Developed as part of the ECCnet Next Generation initiative in collaboration with industry and as a result of user feedback, Product Certification is a standardized data excellence tool that consolidates eCommerce, nutritional and pharmaceutical content certification processes within a single tool.

Product Certification enables multiple internal stakeholders and subject matter experts to certify all content in one user interface for multiple business processes, helping to improve data quality.

Product Certification capabilities include:

  • Single sign-on support; log in to Product Certification using your myGS1 login credentials, reducing the number of individual logins.
  • Consolidated user management; administrators can add and edit Product Certification users in the same place as they manage users for other GS1 Canada solutions, tools and services.
  • A rigorous certification process that supports data excellence, protecting brand integrity and safeguarding against reputational damage.
  • Alignment of nutritional attributes to new Health Canada regulations for on-pack nutrition labeling.

As part of our community engagement process, we asked our users what would make maintaining data excellence and certification easier for them. Overwhelmingly, one of the most common responses was for us to bring all certification types into the same tool.

Users that we talked to identified that it would speed up certification and give their organization a common understanding of what product content was being shared with trading partners across multiple sectors and business processes.

Consumers are increasingly demanding transparent and detailed information about the products they purchase and consume. To meet their needs, trading partners are looking to brand owners to supply 100% complete and accurate brand owner-certified content.

Certified content helps inform and support purchasing decisions by avoiding common issues with data excellence, including missing or incorrect images and inaccurate and out-of-date product content.

Certified content is used to fuel essential business processes such as:

  • Selecting products for retail health and wellness programs.
  • Providing shoppers with full on-pack content to ensure that they have access to the same information online that they would have in-store.
  • Accurate identification of medications at the point of dispensation.
  • Safeguarding against reputational harm.
  • Protecting the safety of Canadian consumers and patients.

Product Certification delivers:

  • Increased data excellence, ensuring content can be certified across all applicable ECCnet Industry Managed Solutions.
  • One-to-many sharing - helping to save time and ensure your brand is consistently conveyed to all trading partners on the system.
  • Quick responses to changing regulatory requirements and consumer and patient demand for product attributes.
  • The ability to provide supplemental product information for eCommerce and nutritional content including additional details about allergens, certification claims, features and benefits and customer friendly product descriptions.

Product Certification enables product owners and brand owners to certify the accuracy of attribute values in the following product data areas:

  • Basic product details
  • Attributes as they relate to the Nutrition Facts panel on the product
  • Ingredients as they relate to the ingredients label on the product
  • A set of common allergens
  • Certification claims (kosher, organic, halal, Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Marine  Stewardship Council)
  • Product claims (optional attributes to record statements as marked on the package)
  • Extended information that appears on-pack (for eCommerce content)

In addition to this labelling information, Product Certification also supports supplemental information not usually found on-pack including extended information about ingredients, allergens, certification claims and customer-friendly product descriptions.

The product certification process is relatively straightforward

  • Capture or load your product content o Visit gs1ca.org/content-capture for capture and loading options for each content type
  • Review your captured or loaded content in Product Certification
  • Add any supplemental information using Product Certification
  • Certify or reject your content within Product Certification
  • Share certified content with your trading partners through The Vault.

Product Certification is part of GS1 Canada’s single sign-on environment, meaning users can access the tool using the same set of credentials they use to log in to myGS1. You will see Product Certification listed on the My Tools section of your myGS1 landing page once you log in.

  • Administrator - Is able to add, delete and edit users within Product Certification
  • Reviewer - conducts the first review of product content to ensure that it is 100% accurate and complete
  • Approver - conducts the final review of product content and changes a product’s status to “certified”

User may take on multiple roles within the same organization. To check your user type(s), click on “User Management” within myGS1.

Administrators can add users, edit user details, change user roles or delete users within the User Management section of myGS1.

Product Certification includes the processes of reviewing, certifying, adding supplemental content, rejecting and delisting.

Your certified content will automatically flow from the Product Certification tool to The Vault, for easier viewing, and sharing with your trading partners.

“Verified” and “certified” describe two different levels of data quality. “Verified” content is data and images that has been successfully audited by a certified third party as correct.

“Certified” content is content that the brand owner has reviewed and 100% certified as being correct, which ensures the highest level of data excellence.

Nutritional product data, once certified, will be published to your trading partners in accordance with your existing ECCnet Registry publication rules.

eCommerce content can be shared with either “verified” or “certified” statuses. Once content enters Product Certification, data providers have a 15-day certification window to certify their data. If it is certified within that time frame, it will be shared with your trading partners as “certified”. However, if the content is not certified within those 15 days, the content will be shared as “verified”. This can be updated to "Certified" status at any time and updates will flow to your trading partners.

Because nutritional and eCommerce content are used for separate business processes, in many companies there are separate people or departments who rely on it. In addition, a single attribute may be used for different purposes depending on which business process it is fuelling. As such, Product Certification needs to provide a full set of content relevant to each process so some attributes will appear in both sets of content.

No, different types of content are handled entirely separately from one another because content may be used for different purposes by different departments.

Rejecting content for one certification type will not affect other certification types for the same product.

Whenever any change is made to product content, it needs to be made at the source of that content (whether through ProSYNC, machine-to-machine or via GS1 Canada Content Capture) so that all tools pulling content from that source will also be updated. This prevents multiple sets of content and helps ensure data quality.

Regular improvements to data capture are also increasing the accuracy of the information in these fields, decreasing the chances of inaccuracies and the need for editing attributes.

If a change to content is needed, an improved rejection process, including the addition of a rejection reason dropdown, are streamlining GS1 Canada’s response to any rejection events.

No, in general Nutritional Content will appear first. This is because eCommerce Content goes through a multi-stage verification process before being loaded into Product Certification tool.

Discontinue

Discontinue Date is a product attribute. This is the last order date, after which the item is no longer available for order. If it is a seasonal item, the same product might be reinstated, depending on the season.

Delist

Removal of a product from a product catalogue. This product might still be available from another distribution source.

When you reject a product in Product Certification, one of the options in the Reason drop-down is "The product is delisted". When you select this option the product is no longer active. A delist report is shared with your data recipients. You cannot certify a delisted product.

No, discontinuing applies only to Nutritional product content.

To remove product images from use by your ecommerce trading partners, in Product Certification, reject the product and select "The product has been delisted" as the rejection reason.

Yes. When you are inside a product view, you can navigate to the Status History section to check all the past actions that have been made to the specific product version.

If a product was submitted for both eCommerce and nutritional content capture, using our current processes, you will see the product twice in Product Certification, once in the context of nutritional content and once in the context of eCommerce content.

By default, when you search for Most Recent Version in the Search Products page, the product that was loaded most recently appears.

The image standards at GS1 are governed by the global imaging specification.

Nothing.

One benefit of consolidating certification types (nutritional, eCommerce, pharmaceutical) into one tool is that it enables GS1 Canada to offer access to as many types as our subscribers need without adding to the subscription cost.

Yes.

If you are using our GDSN M2M loading option and have successfully reached Phase 3, you will first need to log in to M2M eCommerce Product Selector and select which product versions should be verified by GS1 Canada.

This will prevent multiple versions of the same product from your GDSN feed being verified, slowing down the process and driving up the cost. Once your content has been verified, you can then log in to Product Certification and certify as normal.

If you are using our API M2M loading option and have successfully reached Phase 3, you will be able to go straight in to Product Certification to certify your products.

To register for Product Certification, go to gs1ca.org/product-certification and select the type of content you intend to certify. You must register to certify each different type of content separately.

Yes, updated materials are available in GS1 Canada’s Help Library (myGS1 login required) to enable users to become familiar with the new tool.

Within Product Certification itself, you can find tool tips for many features and functions by hovering your mouse in the relevant part of the screen and user guides are available through the Help menu.