Catering and Food-service sector ecommerce initiatives

Currently there is a drive to increase the use of ecommerce in this sector, with many of the major operators such as Compass, Mitchells & Butlers, Unilever, BestFoods, King UK, and 3663 moving away from traditional EDI and using secure Internet technology (AS2) to exchange XML messages such as orders, advanced shipping notes, invoices and credits.

OFSCI (Optimum Foodservice Supply Chain Initiative) was formed by the leading companies in Foodservice to deliver the benefits of eBusiness to their supply chain, and to provide common XML standards to reduce set-up and integration costs for all participants.

In addition, Freeway has joined the OFSCI Solution Providers Group, sharing information about best practices with other leading solution providers. Freeway's Spectrum solutions are completely compatible with the OFSCI XML message formats, which can be integrated seamlessly with the back office products that Spectrum Pro links with.

Freeway already has many successful implementations at suppliers using OFSCI messages exchanged over the Internet using AS2 with their customers, for a case study on AS2 implementation please see the Tchibo Coffee page.

For more information about OFSCI, please visit www.ofsci.org.uk or contact Freeway's sales team...

Grocery

Other Retailers

Catering partners overview