Construction firm Balfour Beatty plans to streamline its supply chain by processing invoices for 10 000 of its regular clients with an electronic trading system.
Construction firm Balfour Beatty, which includes m&e contractor Balfour Kilpatrick, has adopted an electronic trading service.

The firm estimates that 50% of the 965 000 purchase invoices processed annually will be managed under the system within three years. The Burns Business Exchange (beX) electronic trading service will be used to process orders from its regular UK suppliers.

The change to the beX system will be completed in six phases. The first phase involves an internal trading community of six of the firm’s divisions, including construction. This began in August 2001. The second phase will involve a limited number of preferred external suppliers that currently produce a large number of invoices with the Group. In the third phase of the process focus will be on the top 50 preferred suppliers in each division; these account for 42% of the current invoices. The fourth phase will see the focus expanded to cover the top 75 preferred suppliers, accounting for 51% of invoices. Coverage will further expand to the top 250 suppliers in the fifth phase, before the remainder are encompassed under the beX system during phase six.

Balfour Beatty spends in excess of £2 billion annually with over 10 000 suppliers. Its purchasing procedures were previously primarily paper-based. Suppliers will be able to access beX over the Internet via a tailored browser.