The National Buying Group have chosen Freeway Commerce as the supplier of their trading hub solution. According to the group's Managing Director, Allan Durning, Freeway was chosen after the group viewed the offer of a number of major players in the EDI market.
"We found that Freeway's offering was perfect for what we wanted to do," he says. "It gives us an analysis capability that we don't have at present. It's an amazing step forward for us."
The trading hub will be ready to receive test data this month and a few NBG members and suppliers will be carrying out test runs to ensure that there are no complications within the system.
"We need to make sure that we've got it right; if there are any complications that haven't been ironed out it could cause no end of problems that will take that much longer to sort out once all of our members are using the system," says Durning.
Once the system has been tested, the group plan to roll it out to their members in the last quarter of the year. This will be done in stages. Durning is confident that the system will be fully integrated by the first quarter of 2009.
"A lot of independent merchants have got some kind of system in place but they won't necessarily have all of the elements needed for a paper-free office," says Durning. "We're ensuring that every part of the process is electronic, from start to finish. We're the first group to do this in terms of joining up all the dots." | 
