Syndigo: Brands risk overlooking data challenges behind Sunrise 2027

Brands risk underestimating the data challenge behind the global project Sunrise 2027 by focusing on the barcode rather than the information it delivers, according to Tarun Chandrasekhar, president and chief product officer at Syndigo. 

Syndigo is a software and product data services company that helps companies manage product information. 

Chandrasekhar stresses that producers must ensure product data remains accurate and consistent across systems, retailers, and product changes. 

Sunrise 2027 is GS1’s global initiative to enable retailers to scan and process 2D barcodes, including QR codes, at checkout by the end of 2027. For packaging companies, these codes can carry batch numbers and expiry dates and link consumers to ingredient, allergen, and recycling information. 

GS1 is a global NGO that develops standards for identifying products and sharing supply chain data — an increasingly important feature of packaging manufacturing. 

Packaging Insights speak to Chandrasekhar to further understand how the standardization of barcodes and data gathering will impact the packaging value chain. 

How are brands underestimating the data and technology challenges behind Sunrise 2027? 

Chandrasekhar: Brands are still treating Sunrise 2027 as a packaging project, when in reality it’s a product data readiness test. Printing a code is the easy part. The harder part is figuring out what information sits behind it, whether you can trust it, and who is responsible for keeping it current. 

Where this gets complicated in practice is that there isn’t one starting gun in 2027. Different retailers are going to move at different speeds and may want different things from their suppliers. I wouldn’t recommend that a brand start with: what do we need to do for Sunrise? Instead, start with the retail partners: who is moving first, what are they asking for? And then work backward into what that requires from your data and systems. 

If an important retailer is ready and your product information isn’t, you’re potentially looking at a delayed launch, lost shelf time, or a product that isn’t ready to sell. Shoppers already notice when the shelf and the screen don’t match. Sunrise 2027 makes that gap scannable. 

What systems and capabilities do companies need to support accurate 2D barcode data? 

Chandrasekhar: A more sophisticated barcode doesn’t solve a bad product record. Brands need a trusted source of product information, clear ownership of key attributes, and systems that can validate and syndicate that information across retail partners. 

Take a reformulation that adds an allergen. The new product gets a new Global Trade Item Number, but the old packages are still on shelves and in pantries, and the code on them still resolves something. If one system overwrites the old record or links the codes to the same content, the barcode works perfectly and still gives the shopper the wrong answer. The same goes for where the code points. When a product changes, the brand must update every destination behind that code, not just the product page. 

Fixing those inconsistencies manually gets expensive fast. Every time a team has to reconcile the same product across multiple systems or retail partners, you add work and slow down how quickly that change reaches the shelf. 

How should brands prepare their product information systems for the transition? 

Chandrasekhar: Brands should use the next year to learn rather than trying to solve every possible 2D barcode use case at once. Pick a retailer, a category, or even a subset of SKUs and run through the process from end to end. Then test the use cases you actually care about. You may find that printing and scanning the code is the easy part, and the real bottleneck is something much less exciting, like two systems that don’t agree on a product’s attribute. 

Across the trading partners in our network, the attribute that breaks most often is package dimensions and weight. Not glamorous, but that’s the kind of problem you want to find now, not when a retailer is waiting for you. 

How could 2D barcodes create new opportunities beyond identification and traceability? 

Chandrasekhar: The 2D barcode is really an access point. One code can serve different people different things. A shopper in the aisle gets product details and usage instructions. A store associate gets lot and expiration data, so a register can stop a recalled batch at checkout or mark down a product nearing its expiration date. A recycler or regulator gets material composition and end-of-life information. 

Under the GS1 Digital Link standard, the brand decides where each of those requests goes, and it can change those destinations without touching the package. 

Regulation may push this faster than marketing will. The EU’s Digital Product Passport starts with batteries in February 2027 and expands to textiles, steel, and other categories after that. EU packaging rules are moving material and sorting information onto data carriers as well. A brand that treats Sunrise 2027, the passport, and packaging labeling as three separate code projects ends up with three versions of the truth. 

One standardized base code, resolving one governed product record, can serve all of them. And a passport isn’t a marketing page. The data must be auditable and stay tied to the product for its whole life. 

That’s why link management matters as much as the code itself. Brands need one place to control what every code resolves to, by audience and use case, and to keep it in sync with the product record. 

Syndigo’s Link Manager does that, alongside digital catalog capabilities that give trading partners a current view of the same data. None of it works if the data behind the link is wrong. A well-managed link to a bad record just gets the wrong answer to the shopper faster.