Food companies look to E-commerce

Food and drink companies will pump millions of pounds into e-commerce, this is the finding of a recent survey by the UK newspaper Financial Times.​The survey claimed that companies will look to extend existing business partnerships and cut costs dramatically across the supply chain. The Financial Times surveyed 30 of the UK's blue-chip food and drinks companies and 12 of the largest 15 responded. Despite enthusiasm for e-procurement, 71 per cent of respondents said they had committed less than £1m each to its development. With margins squeezed throughout the supply chain, there is little money with which companies can experiment. However, the report writes that traditional procurement and selling can take days and can cost up to £80 a transaction. Some enthusiasts claim that a fully automated computer system could cut costs to about £10-£15, and contract day-long transactions into minutes. About 36 per cent of UK companies have already shifted some traditional electronic data interchange systems (EDI) operations to the internet and 35 per cent of respondents said they primarily wanted the internet to share information with their partners. In the study, 60 per cent said they were already part of electronic trading communities - a third of which were described as up and running, and the remainder still in their pilot stages.