It's make or break for smaller merchants using EDI in the building supplies industry, says Freeway Commerce. Inaccuracies of supplier codes is costing smaller merchants dear and preventing progress of electronic trading

Freeway Commerce, supplier of EDI and e-commerce integration, has stated that the building services industry needs to tighten up its product coding, to ensure that smaller merchants can benefit from Electronic Trading. Freeway is already working with a number of buying groups to encourage their communities to use the online UK Construction Industry Product Catalogue, e-Xact, which already has over 200 suppliers signed up. According to Freeway Commerce, standardising product codes will reduce the number of errors made when ordering supplies electronically, reducing the time and costs associated for smaller merchants.

Freeway Commerce is working with many independent buying groups in the building services industry to provide electronic trading solutions that streamline the supply chain processes.  Working with buying groups such as the CBA, (Combined Buying Association) a group of independent builders and plumbers merchants, Freeway Commerce is actively encouraging communities to adopt EDI and sign up to the eXact online service. 

The e-Xact product database contains details of over 200,000 products from over 200 suppliers and can be accessed online via the e-Xact website. Information can be viewed and downloaded by subscribers and integrated into their own back office systems for easy product ordering.

Beverley James, Marketing Director of e-Xact Online commented ;"e-Xact Online's success is as a result of our customer focussed approach to providing high quality information, acting as a one-stop shop for building product information.

"The risk of misinformation can be costly - providing electronic access to accurate product details, and a range of technical and health and safety sheets, enables suppliers to improve the service they can provide to merchants. e-Xact complements many larger suppliers' existing websites by providing a reliable, alternative route to their information and providing them with a high quality resource that smaller merchants can easily access."

According to Paul Kaye of Freeway Commerce: "Many smaller independent merchants wish to employ Electronic Trading (EDI) as a working standard but barriers such as costly dedicated Value Added Networks (VANs), lack of a common standard and accounting package integration have prevented them from moving forward. 

"Freeway's solution uses the internet, so cost is no longer an issue and we also enable integration with virtually all of the merchant and supplier back office systems. The next step is to ensure the integrity of the data and improve the quality of the product codes. Services like e-Xact Online are already proactively addressing this issue to really improve the quality of information that is accessible to smaller merchants."