eC-BP's Best Practices Award Presented to Food Lion's Carolyn Hager

The eCommerce Best Practices Awards were announced last night at the first annual eC-BP.org Awards Banquet. The awards were presented based on criteria developed thie year to recognize the person or group that best exemplifies best practices in implementing an EDI initiative while adhering to the tenets espoused by eC-BP.

(PRWEB) June 9, 2005 -- The eCommerce Best Practices Awards were announced last night at the first annual eC-BP.org Awards Banquet. The awards were presented based on criteria developed this year to recognize the person or group that best exemplifies the best practices in implementing an EDI initiative while adhering to the tenets espoused by eC-BP.

The eC-BP tenets are meant to give the eCommerce community a common viewpoint for developing and managing eBusiness in an open and cooperative atmosphere. The idea is that by removing the barriers to implementation of eCommerce, more organizations will be encouraged and able to participate. The end result will be business done more easily and accurately by more companies. The elimination of implementation barriers means more smaller businesses are able to afford to connect to the eBusiness infrastructure and participate in the increasingly competitive global economy.

To that end, eC-BP bases its efforts and direction on these basic tenets

-The elimination of EDI/eCommerce testing fees

-The elimination of mandated third party providers or proprietary systems

-The elimination of EDI to FAX by establishing Internet access as a minimum business requirement

-Set realistic timeframes for the implementation of eCommerce initiatives

-Implement eCommerce systems that are compliant with industry standards and have professionals on hand to run them

-Actively promote participation in eC*BP to your trading partners.

In determining the candidates and recipients for the Best Practices Award, eC-BP established a set of criteria and an overall objective.

Organizations eligible for recognition have excelled in one or more of these areas:

-Return on investment

-Integration with business practices

-eCommerce as a competitive advantage

-Most innovative eCommerce program initiative

-Creative problem solving

-Level of adoption

-Achievement of strategic goals

-Best use of technology

-Innovation

The eC-BP.org award for eCommerce Best practices is being presented to a team that shifted from a mainframe environment it had been using since 1989, to a PC based EDI system; a move that not only required learning a new set of technology, but also produced tremendous savings in equipment and support costs. This team convinced its nearly 2,300 vendors to do business its way without setting a hard mandate. They enlisted the support of the other groups within the organization to understand the benefits of change to the company, and those departments worked with their contacts at each vendor to encourage them to follow along. They continue to maintain an open relationship with multiple service providers and have not mandated that their vendors use a particular provider. And as part of an international organization, produces some 30 EDI documents.

As result of her team's efforts, Food Lion saved more than 1/2 million dollars in the first year of the transition alone, and now has 100% of its vendors transacting business with it efficiently through EDI.

eC-BP is proud to present the eC-BP.org award for eCommerce Best Practices to Food Lion's Carolyn Hager and her team. Congratulations Carolyn.

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