Timber e-business reaches plateau

Despite "notable gains" made over the past year, uptake of e-business across the Scottish forest industry supply chain "appears to have reached a plateau" while its adoption among smaller companies remains low, delegates at a Scottish Forest Industry Cluster's e-Business Forum conference in Troon heard.

Chairman Alan Bloomfield, group wood fibre procurement manager for Norbord Ltd, said that of the 265 forest industry organisations questioned for the Scottish e-Business Survey 2004, 34% described e-business as either "essential" or "very important" to them compared to just 24% in 2003, while 79% of connected organisations said they had derived benefit from their e-business investment. However, the proportion of organisations connecting to the internet has fallen to 68% from 71% last year – one of the lowest connection rates of any sector.

Separate research has uncovered 14 areas of information loss and duplica-tion within the forest industry supply chain, including: conversion to paper-base of documents received in electronic format; the raising of multiple invoices within the same transaction; and double-entering of weight tickets and advice notes.