GS1 Netherlands Speeds Up Product Data Quality and Validation Decisions with FlexRule

GS1 Netherlands is a not-for-profit organization enabling reliable, efficient, and transparent product data exchange across supply chains. Serving thousands of businesses, from retail to healthcare, GS1 Netherlands makes product information accessible with a single scan.

Every day, thousands of new products enter the Dutch marketplace, each requiring detailed data submissions to GS1 systems. Ensuring that this vast volume of product data consistently meets strict quality and compliance standards was a significant challenge.

Previously, GS1 Netherlands relied on a combination of simple and complex validation methods. Managing the underlying business decisions that determined data quality was technically demanding, heavily dependent on IT, and offered limited opportunity for domain experts to directly contribute.

This approach created three key challenges:

• Limited involvement from domain experts: Critical industry knowledge was not directly embedded into operational decisions, reducing agility and accuracy.
• Communication barriers: Decision logic and quality criteria were buried in code, making it difficult for business and IT teams to collaborate effectively.
• Slow response to change: Updating decision logic to reflect regulatory changes, new product categories, or emerging quality issues was time-consuming and resource-intensive.

GS1 Netherlands adopted FlexRule’s Open Decision Intelligence Platform, powered by our Decision-Centric Approach®, to transform how product data quality decisions are designed, managed, and executed. By putting decisions, not systems or code, at the heart of operations, GS1 Netherlands makes these decisions Accurate, Consistent, and Transparent, a standard we call Quick ACT™.

Business experts can now directly author, manage, and optimise the decisions that safeguard product data quality, without relying on IT to translate their expertise into code. This ensures that domain knowledge is embedded into operations where it has the most impact.

Using Dynamic Decision Graph (DDG), GS1 Netherlands can visually model and step through decision logic in a clear, standardized format. DecisionLang powers complex expressions that requires to validate GS1 hierarchical data and XML documents. This transparency enables both technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand, validate, and improve the decisions that govern product data quality.

DecisionLang powering complex calculation, data validation, decisions and rules enabled quick update in response to new regulations, emerging product categories, or evolving quality standards. This agility enables GS1 Netherlands to respond to change in hours or days, not weeks, while maintaining compliance and high-quality standards.

• Faster decision changes: Updates to product data quality decisions can be made in hours or days instead of weeks.
• Improved collaboration: Business users and IT teams can work together more effectively with transparent, visual decision models.
• Greater transparency: Decision logic is visible and easy to explain to both internal and external stakeholders.
• Increased business ownership: Domain experts can directly manage decision changes without heavy IT reliance.
• AI-ready decisioning: The Open Decision Intelligence Platform provides the capability to integrate AI/ML models to predict and prevent quality issues before they impact operations.