Vizient, Inc. has announced the rollout of enhancements to its item master management platform, DataLYNX. This solution offers users several new tools for more effective item master management. The enhancements include compressed ERP descriptions, “on-demand” Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN) and product attributes for environmentally preferred products (EPP), which improve item master data quality and completeness.
“Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions typically have character limitations for descriptions,” said Bejan Shamsy, senior vice president of procure-to-pay solutions at Vizient. “Using artificial intelligence, we have truncated and standardized the full-length product descriptions based on known ERP compression requirements. This enables the DataLYNX tool to feed the descriptions in formats that align with our users’ ERPs.”
This enhancement to DataLYNX delivers six standardized product-description columns based on the character count requirements for known ERP systems. Custom descriptions, based on the individual needs of the hospital, are also available.
Vizient has also enhanced the GTIN content in DataLYNX, allowing users to download this content on demand to proactively pull these unique identification codes in their ERP. This is key for product scanning and e-commerce transactions and will help health systems meet UDI (unique device identification) requirements. Adding the EPP attributes offers users details about chemical and material composition and recyclability, which are important in value analysis processes and risk management.
