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The U.P.C. to EAN Bar Code
Transition
Maximizing
Book Sales Across the Supply Chain
Information
for BOOK RETAILERS
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The EAN-13 bar code is already widely used within the
book industry. As a result, many book retailers are
already Sunrise 2005 compliant. However, some book
retailers may
still have to expand fields in
their databases and reports. If that is the case, GS1 U.S. and BISG
recommend expanding those fields to accommodate at least 14 digits. Book
retailers may eventually wish to include in their title
records other identifiers now coming on line such as the ISTC
(International Standard Textual Work Code) or the DOI (Digital Object
Identifier), both of which are of variable length [see
BISG's
Roadmap of Identifiers for further
explanation of ISTC and DOI].
Technologies such as RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification), the possible further expansion of the
capability of the ISBN numbering system to include
various versions of e-books and excerpts of full works,
and other changes in the future may dictate that
identifiers for the book industry have to expand beyond
14 digits.
Affected Internal
Systems
Areas in book retailers' systems that should be reviewed
for compatibility with the 13-digit identifiers include:
- Point of Sale (POS)
- Title records and related data-bases
- Order
processing
- Receiving
- Returns processing
- Special orders
- Order
fulfillment
In all these areas, book retailers (or their systems vendor) should review instances where the
EAN-13/ISBN is used in:
- Screens
- Reports
- Forms exchanged with trading partners
- Electronic formats exchanged with trading partners
Furthermore, BISG recommends that when retailers upgrade their systems to become
EAN-13 bar code
compliant, they take the extra step of expanding their
database to allow for 14-digit bar code compliance as
well. This additional change will allow the
identification of the entire family of GTIN bar codes
and bring your company in line with RFID and global data
synchronization requirements.
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