Around 40% of Forestry Commission (FC) timber sales and despatches in Scotland are now being handled via the Electronic Forestry Information Data Standard and the proportion will rise to 70% by the end of next year, according to Stephen Stanley, chairman of the e-Business Forum within the Scottish Forest Industries Cluster (SFIC). Similar levels of increase are being recorded in the private sector, he told the recent fourth annual e-Business for Forestry Conference in Dunfermline.
Mr Stanley, who works for Scottish Woodlands, explained that the GIS data transfer standard had been piloted by three private companies and three FC Scotland conservancies, and that it would deliver “real benefits in time and effort when systems are developed to fully exploit it”. A dozen companies are using the standard at present.
Implementation of e-business systems within the forestry sector has increased steadily since SFIC’s first e-business conference fours years ago. “All of our major companies are either now making use of the technology, or are in the process of adopting it,” Mr Stanley said. Initiatives to date had demonstrated that e-business “has the potential to remove costs from the value chain, and is improving communications between the supplier and customer”. Nevertheless, many medium-size forestry companies “have yet to fully engage” with e-business, he added.
Standards
Mr Stanley reported that the e-Business Forum had recently agreed to use global standards organisation OASIS as the host for the standards. “This will serve to enrich the standard through input from companies all over the world, and will also help to embed it in the wider forest, processing and retailing sectors,” he said.
The Dunfermline conference gave precedence to the practical application and benefits of e-business within forestry firms. Neil Cowan, roundwood manager at Dalbeattie-based Howie Forest Products, confirmed significant savings in administration costs both in-house and for suppliers by developing a new log management system based on highly accurate laser scanning. Under the new system, the company captures data on each of the 10,000 logs the facility processes on an average day. Suppliers receive a weekly report on their deliveries (including number of rejections) and save money through the self-billing procedure. Self-billing has saved Howie an estimated 15 man-hours per week.
Paperless invoices
Looking to the future, Mr Cowan said his aim was to move more suppliers away from paper invoices and to have FC send despatch information to Howie via XML (eXtensible Markup Language).
Also unequivocal about the benefits of e-business systems was Philip Mackenzie, finance director with sawmiller John Gordon & Son of Nairn. Having received orders by fax and telephone in the past, these are now sent electronically from the branches and collated in a single file. These data are used to place orders within the system. Implementation highlights included: ease of integration; ready acceptance by users; fewer invoicing enquiries; no “lost” orders; and fewer errors in order input. Furthermore, administration time had been reduced despite a doubling of company turnover over the past five years.
Also noting differences in product definitions from one company to another, he commented: “Compromises have to be reached – and one such compromise is that every order/invoice is confirmed by a human before being fed into the system.”
The conference also highlighted the dynamic nature of e-business. For example, FC’s head of finance systems development Steve Atkins informed delegates of a new initiative for the out-of-office hours issuing of PIN numbers to hauliers. For timber security reasons, the haulier must be in receipt of a PIN number before uplift is allowed. FC is trialling a scheme which enables the haulier to connect with an FC system via mobile phone and provide a product code/despatch note number. Once these have been validated, the haulier is issued immediately with a PIN number.
In a trial involving Coille Haulage in West Argyll, drivers had shown a distinct preference for the interactive voice option. The company was using the system for 65% of its despatches and was aiming for 100% “as soon as possible”, the conference learned.
According to Mr Atkins, the advantage of this system was that the mobile phone technology was readily available, scalable, relatively low cost, and offered security to both the haulier and the commission. Users could be provided with a list of codes/products as well as training in use of the system, he added.
