Local firm wins global partnership with IBM

A local software company, FXA Group, has become the first Asia-Pacific firm offering food traceability software to achieve a global partnership with IBM.

The move will not only help FXA to spread its software throughout the world, but will also bring global recognition to the Thai software industry.

FXA was established seven years ago by a group of Thai programmers with the aim of developing software for tracing products from their origins through manufacture, storage and distribution, for the food industry in particular.

IBM and FXA announced their global collaboration in Bangkok last week.

FXA is to embed IBM software called InfoSphere Traceability Server into its food-traceability software, OpsSmart, in order to help food producers around the world improve the safety of their products throughout the supply chain.

IBM will be responsible for marketing the Thai-made software in global markets, helping FXA to rapidly achieve worldwide sales.

The leader of IBM's Business Strategy for Emerging Markets, Paul Chang, said food traceability had been a focus area for the US-based multinational company over the past two years. IBM spent five years researching and developing its InfoSphere Traceability Server before it was launched commercially in December 2006, and joining FXA is IBM's latest move to increase its competitiveness in the food traceability market, he said.

The food industry is a very challenging environment for the development of traceability software because driving forces include consumer pressure - they want to be protected when consuming food - government regulations and industry requirements for quality. Traceability also drives food producers to provide more details on products.

"With foodstuffs being sourced across international borders, consumers are demanding to know more about the products they buy; the conditions they were grown in and the conditions they were kept in as they travelled from farm to table," he said.

Integration between InfoSphere and OpsSmart will help players in the food supply chain, including manufacturers, packagers, distributors and sellers or retailers to share and exchange production and handling information via an immediate Web-based service. This information can flow forward and backward through the supply chain efficiently. Importantly, it will enable the sharing of information vital to food safety and marketing.

"Users need only OpsSmart software embedded with InfoSphere, a barcode record and an Internet connection and they can benefit from a total food-traceability solution from farm to fork, and can easily trace any part of the whole supply chain," Chang said.

Sharing of data among trading partners provides many benefits, including shipment and receipt confirmations, inventory visibility, efficient recalls and returns and counterfeit detection for high-value products.

InfoSphere, which is compliant with GS1 EPC Global's Electronic Product Code Information Services standards for data capture and sharing such as location, temperature, and other relevant data, allows trading companies to track their products as they move through the global supply chain.

Based on XML message format, OpsSmart embedded with InfoSphere will bring more open standards and integration to food processing companies than the proprietary system. This will provide more opportunities for food producers to expand their export markets.

An IBM business development executive for consumer products, Asia-Pacific, Chris Cave Jones, said food safety was an important issue in IBM's growth markets in Asia-Pacific, South America and Eastern Europe, because consumers needed protection and food processing companies needed to achieve exports efficiently.

"Food traceability software and solutions will help to increase consumer confidence by providing tools for tracing not only the origins and ingredients in food but also the supply chain through which they were obtained and delivered," Cave Jones said.

FXA is the first Thai software company - and the first such company in Asia - to achieve a global partnership with IBM. Under the collaborative arrangement, FXA will remain responsible for the domestic market while IBM takes care of global marketing.

FXA's marketing head Chatta Udomwongsa said his company had recently set up a hosting server to provide the OpsSmart software embedded with InfoSphere as a service model to small- and medium-sized food companies in Thailand. The company aims to help food-industry SMEs with its software after having successfully reached large-sized food companies such as Betagro, CP, Pack Food and Thai Union Frozen.

"From now on, IBM will help us to work in the global market. However, we have also exported OpsSmart - localised into six main languages - to markets including the United States, England, the Netherlands, the Philippines, China and Australia," Chatta said.

OpsSmart has five modules: FarmSmart, QualitySmart, ProductionSmart, FreightSmart and TraceItSmart.

9:49 20/1/2552