This Epilogue was written in October, 2003, after a telephone interview with Terry Carr, Financial Director, C&D Foods Ltd. It's purpose is to review progress since the original Case Study, which was produced in the first quarter of 2002.

C&D Foods Ltd is now two years into it's eBusiness development strategy. As a company supplying into very competitive marketplaces, C&D Foods Ltd recognised early on the importance of an eBusiness strategy in remaining competitive. The initial application to the Accelerator Fund focused on developments which would improve back office efficiencies and increase competitiveness. The company's systems upgrades included TASK software for accounting and Tropos for ERP, these systems replaced the then existing COBOL based system.

General Update on situation since implementation

The original implementation of the eBusiness strategy took longer than expected. Following the initial installation of the TASK and Tropos systems, the development reached a plateau nine months into the strategy. However the implementation of these systems has improved C&D Food's capacity to work online and staff now access customer supply details online at the customers web site. This information is downloaded to C&D Food's Tropos system with minimal human intervention and without repeat entry and resulting reports and invoicing is generated through the system. This would not have been possible with the old system.

In reviewing the strategy, the company decided to change the focus of the development. The current eBusiness development is now much more focused on making real time information available from the production process , thereby eliminating inefficiencies and costly time delays. The company's Financial Director Terry Carr, believes as he originally stated that it was a mistake not to involve other areas of the business (other than administration, who were involved) in the original eBusiness strategy. This has now been addressed in the current development.

Early on in the project C&D Foods recognised that a lack of in-house IT skills resulted in the company depending largely on vendors for information and advice on systems. The company has since employed an IT staff member who will have responsibility for some of the systems development in the future.

Available Measures of Success e.g. cost reduction, improved efficiencies.

Since the implementation of the TASK and Tropos systems, the company has seen definite improvement in efficiencies. Available measures of success show an increase in volume of transaction handled of up to 20-25% with no corresponding increase in staff. In addition the company has implemented a number of additional business processes since the original strategy, such as off-site processing, this is now all being handled through the company's same administrative system without occurring any additional costs.

Overall the company has managed to grow the business without the increasing costs that would have normally been associated with growth, something that Terry would attribute to having the TASK and Tropos systems in place.

Ongoing issues/problems to resolve
One issue that the C&D Foods is determined to resolve is the lack of real-time information from the production process. The company's current system for recoding of this information is manual and as a result there is an inevitable time delay. C&D Foods has reviewed the process and have gone to tender for an automated system to replace the current manual one. It is envisioned that the development will build upon the systems in place and ultimately will make real-time information available 24-hours a day. The company expects that this automation of the system will allow them divert three jobs into other areas of production. This project is due for completion and implementation in early January 2004.

Any future planned developments.
C&D Foods are currently looking at how they could extract more customer information from the customer website activity and integrate this into the TASK and Tropos systems. Terry believes that when they have completed the current phase of system development and implementation that it will facilitate further systems development and flexibility to integrate with its UK retail customers.

Produced by Claire Cunningham, Aura Internet Services