PLANET was founded in 1985 under the slogan "sharing the system, competing on the shelves" with the goal of strengthening the consumer packaged goods(CPG) distribution structure as the first value-added network (VAN) management company in Japan. We have continued to strengthen and expand our systems in accordance with advances in information and communication technology (ICT) since that time, as well as standardizing 24 types of data transmission for transactions between manufacturers and wholesalers, and the numbering/management of shared codes for retailers and wholesalers. Currently our EDI services handle 140 million or more lines of business form data per month for our more than 1,200 customers, including materials suppliers, CPG/over-the-counter (OTC) medicine manufacturers and wholesalers.

Our value within the industry continues to increase as the provider of infrastructure for CPG/OTC distribution and marketing, with the majority of our users transitioning to the automation of processes such as paperless order placement/acceptance and invoicing/collection. Therefore, recognizing that our social mission consists in the continuous provision of our EDI services in the face of any accident or disaster, we have constructed a comprehensive business continuity plan (BCP) which includes not only the establishment of a three-level security plan for our EDI system, but also annual disaster recovery exercises in which our customers participate.

We plan to use the experience we have gained so far in providing standardized EDI between CPG/OTC manufacturers and wholesalers to develop an EDI service with operations support centers like ours in wholesaler-retailer transactions.

In addition to EDI services that make routine business more efficient, we are also developing a membership-based Web service called “Buyers’ Net,” for use in non-routine business such as product planning and marketing. The core of Buyers’ Net content is CPG/OTC product information containing images of more than 150,000 items, and access has been increasing since new product information is posted there three months before launch. We are also enabling activities such as electronic business talks, exchanges of store information, and the transmission of special sales data through this service. We will continue to  further enhance Buyers’ Net  and forge more effective links with EDI services as part of our effort to increase added value as a marketing network linking the distribution industry.

PLANET will monitor the trends of standardization in ICT and distribution, so as to contribute to the CPG/OTC distribution and marketing sector and to society as a whole by continuously offering safe, neutral information infrastructure services which set the standard in the business.