Dallas January 17, 2003 Dairy.com, an e-marketplace for the dairy industry, this week rolled out new a new procurement tool intended to streamline dairy sourcing processes.
The e-marketplace, a dot-com survivor, said its new DairySource tool incorporates online reverse auction technology and is intended to help dairy procurement personnel easily identify and qualify new suppliers and capture savings.
"DairySource is an important addition, taking Dairy.com beyond dairy commodities into other purchase areas," said Scott Sexton, Dairy.com's president.
With member companies representing a majority of the annual U.S. dairy sales, Dairy.com said it would host sourcing events for fluid, dry dairy and non-dairy ingredients, sweeteners, juice concentrates, plant supplies and other purchases necessary to dairy companies.
The e-marketplace said that both buyers and sellers benefit from the new tool because it will make the sourcing process less cumbersome and opaque. As an example, the Dairy.com said DairySource could give suppliers exposure to a broader potential customer base. DairySource provides product specifications and a neutral and open bidding process, so each supplier sees the price required to compete and can choose whether to bid or walk away.
Al Zolin, of consumer foods giant Kraft, which has already used the new tool for multiple sourcing events across various dairy commodities, praised the efficiency of the process. "Dairy.com worked with our existing suppliers to bring them to the events and qualified new suppliers," Zolin said. "The time element from Kraft's perspective was minimal, and the entire process, from start to finish, took only a couple of weeks. The groundwork laid by Dairy.com gave me comfort that I would be part of a very competitive event. In fact, the end results were better than I expected."
Zolin said he was looking at expanding the process to cover more of Kraft's dairy purchases.
