Balfour Beatty constructs 'realistic' ebusiness strategy

Balfour Beatty has signed a deal with Burns ecommerce solutions to manage the construction group's supplier trading.

The Burns Business Exchange (beX) trading service will handle half of Balfour Beatty's 965,000 annual purchase invoices. The construction company spends £2bn a year with more than 10,000 suppliers, and up until now has relied predominantly on paper for its purchasing procedures.

The company's new ebusiness strategy has three objectives: collaborative working, sharing its knowledge base electronically among employees and e-procurement to reduce the cost of transactions.

The company's IT director, Colin Darch, has categorically stated that the company has no intentions of getting involved with e-marketplaces or online auctions. This follows the company's failed attempt to kick-off a trading hub named arridao with partners including Bovis and Laing.

It now intends to take what Darch describes as a "realistic approach" to ebusiness in the aftermath of the B2B fallout.

David Foster, CEO of Burns, explained his company is targeting customers who are "looking to address pain points with relatively easy-to-implement solutions rather than grand e-marketplaces".

The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.