Pittsburgh September 25, 2002 The British government's Forestry Commission is looking to take an ax to the cost of buying and selling timber by implementing an e-sourcing tool from solution provider Moai.
The commission, the U.K. government department responsible for forestry in Great Britain, is the single biggest supplier of round timber in the United Kingdom and Ireland, responsible for more than 50 percent of the softwood production in the isles.
Now the commission has implemented Moai's CompleteSource solution to conduct Internet-based timber sales. The agency will use the solution as an online platform to handle the Forestry Commission's open-market timber sales, worth $39 million annually.
The online auction solution will replace the traditional and more costly and time-consuming for the Forestry Commission and potential buyers live auctions and "sealed bid" tenders. Initially the Forestry Commission will use CompleteSource to provide an online version of the traditional auction formats with which its buyers are familiar.
The Forestry Commission also plans to use the solution for its own e-sourcing needs to help procure everything from contract services to industrial clothing and stationery.
"We needed a solution that would offer flexibility in terms of auction format and sales type, allowing us to gradually adopt new models with the support of our buyers," said Bob McIntosh, CEO of Forest Enterprise, the company that acts as land manager for all of the commission's 1 million hectares of land. "The CompleteSource solution gives us that, as well as the potential to unlock additional functionality to allow us to move to a full e-sourcing model in the future."
