From Manual to Mastery:
How Australian Retail Suppliers Unlock End-to-End Digital Operations
Speakers
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Peter Wijeratne — Moderator, OrderStream
20 years deep in the Australian supply chain — EDI, GS1 compliance, warehouse operations, B2B retail integration. He's guided hundreds of suppliers through exactly this transition.
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Brian Amit — Founder, Peercore IT
30 years from Dunlop and Australia Post to the Victorian Government and Head of IT at Peerless Group. Now running Peercore IT and still actively working with Australian businesses on the decisions that define their next decade.
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Ethan Ward — Advisor, Global Standards & Solutions, GS1 Australia
Analytics background, now translating GS1 compliance into plain language for suppliers — the barcodes, labels, and standards that make everything else in the supply chain possible.
About this section
This webinar brought together supply chain experts and GS1 Australia to examine why many Australian retail suppliers remain stuck — with EDI at both ends and manual chaos in the middle — and what it takes to move beyond it.
Video Chapters
1:06 Introducing Our Speakers — Brian & Ethan (GS1)
4:20 The Reality: 97% of Australian Businesses are Small
6:23 How Has Supply Chain Changed Over 30 Years?
8:21 EDI — What's Really Happening Under the Hood?
11:14 The Four Stages of Digital Maturity
16:00 Why Your Business System is the Key to Everything
18:37 Case Study: From $60M to $1 Billion in Revenue
22:13 The Reality for Most Suppliers — Stage 2 Explained
24:21 AI — Hype or Real Value for Small Suppliers?
26:32 Brian's Key Takeaways — The Boat in the Driveway
28:37 Ethan from GS1 — The Standards Foundation
32:43 SSCC Labels — The Critical Identifier Explained
Coming Soon
The Digital Maturity Diagnostic
Not sure which stage your business is at? We're releasing a short self-assessment tool in the next two weeks. Enter your email below and we'll send it to you the moment it's live.
Hot Topics From the Webinar
Hot topics
1. We have EDI with some retailers, but what about our non-retail
The same automation can apply to food service, wholesale, and independents — one process for all customers, not just those who mandated it.
2. We're on MYOB / Xero — do we need to rip and replace?
Accounting software wasn't originally built for the supply chain. Eventually, the add-ons stop functioning, and a purpose-built system becomes the only solution. The shift doesn't need to happen overnight.
3. Our EDI is working but we're still getting DIFOT penalties — why?
EDI is just the communication layer. DIFOT is won or lost in the middle — picking, packing, labelling, inventory accuracy. Compliance and execution are two very different things
4. We run retail AND food service — can one system really handle both?
It should. Running two parallel processes in one business is exactly what drives cost and errors. The goal is one order flow regardless of customer type.
5. What does GS1 compliance actually mean for us day-to-day?
Barcodes, SSCC labels and GLNs are the language retailers speak. When these are built into your system rather than managed manually, compliance becomes a by-product of normal operations — not a separate job.
6. How do you know when you've genuinely outgrown your current system?"
When volume goes up and your first instinct is to hire more people. When someone leaves and takes your process with them. When you're turning down orders because you can't fulfil them reliably. That's not a people problem — that's a system problem.
7. What does it actually cost to get from Stage 2 to Stage 3?
The better question is what Stage 2 is already costing you — DIFOT penalties, re-keying errors, extra headcount, and the orders you can't take because your system won't scale.
8. What would Stage 3 look like for a business of our size?
The better question is what Stage 2 is already costing you — DIFOT penalties, re-keying errors, extra headcount, and the orders you can't take because your system won't scale.