e.centre — setting e-business standards
e.centre is an independent trade association working to improve supply chain efficiency through the widespread adoption of e-business.
No matter where your company operates within the supply chain, you will benefit from using internationally-accepted business standards for identifying products and communicating with your trading partners. Whether you need a barcode, want to manage your supply chain better or are looking for unbiased advice about e-business, e.centre is on hand to help.
Based on 25 years of experience, e.centre offers members an unrivalled understanding of doing business electronically. Drawn from both public and private sectors, the 16,000 members range from multi-national corporations to SMEs, giving e.centre the skills and authority to influence government, regulatory bodies and strategic partners to create a favourable environment for e-business to flourish.
e.centre is part of the worldwide EAN International network, which manages the global system of electronic business communications, and represents the interests of the UK business community in formulating the vital international standards that underpin all e-business transactions. The EAN system enables a process of seamless supply chain management; automatic identification and data capture identifies the goods and physically moves with them; while data transfer standards for electronic documents support the transactions between sender and receiver. These standards support the daily business communications of over 850,000 companies in 141 countries, resulting in over 5 billion transactions per day!
With its wide-ranging national and international connections, fund of knowledge and wealth of experience, e.centre is well equipped to provide its members with independent information and advice to nurture their successful use of e-business.
e.centre provides a single centre of excellence for electronic commerce in the UK. It adds value to its members by being the pre-eminent, most trusted source of the best standards for business data and the best practices for electronic commerce. e.centre exploits the value in the business data standards from EAN International and in the information exchange standards driven by the market.
e.centre has 16,000 members of all sizes from the smallest SMEs to giant multinational corporations and from all sectors of industry from mining to accountancy and from food manufacture to heavy engineering. 90% of the members are users of electronic commerce, including some from central and local government. Most of the remainder are solutions and service suppliers. It has a professional, dedicated staff of 40.
e.centre is a non-profit making body with over 20 years experience in electronic commerce. It is the UK member of EAN International, which has 800,000 subscribers in 90 countries globally, and is responsible for the most widely used product numbering standards in the world.