Fresh food giant Betagro is to allow international importers and local consumers to track the origins of its food products and the processes through which they pass by Internet before the end of this year.

As well as creating a website for the e-traceability system, the company is to provide what it calls Spy on Me kiosks at 14 Betagro shops around the country, allowing consumers to trace food products from source.

The director of Betagro’s Food Safety and Quality Assurance Office, Sahas Ratanasoponchai, said the website aimed to give international suppliers who import Betagro’s cooked chicken and pork products the ability to trace them back to origin. Local consumers of the company’s fresh chicken and pork retail packs will also be able to trace the products back to origin via the Internet or at Spy on Me kiosks, to confirm food safety.

"We don’t think that our investment in the e-traceability system will lift the cost of our products, but we think the system will help our business to create an image of confidence and satisfaction for our customers. The company will also be able to trace its products back through the production chain to the original source within a couple minutes," Sahas said.

He said Betagro was the first food company in Thailand to launch an e-traceability system via the Internet. Its software tracks the origin of raw materials and follows products through production processes. The e-traceability system has three parts: raw materials received, production processes, and product shipments.

At present, the company enables customers who buy its fresh chicken and pork products from supermarket shelves at 11 stores in The Mall Supermarket chain to trace the products, he said. They can discover where the products came from, the standard farm and production processes through which they passed, the type of goods, farm name and location, age, gender, standard certification, veterinarian, production date and expiry date. All this from existing Spy on Me kiosks set up to make customers more confident about the quality and safety of the food.

Betagro now plans to set up 14 more Spy on Me kiosks at its own shops around the country within the next few years.

It also plans to extend its e-traceability system to cover egg and sausage supply chains within several years, and eventually it aims to provide e-traceability for all of its product lines.

"We have spent about Bt10 million on internal development of the e-traceability system since 2002. It is now fully implemented in both poultry and swine businesses for transparency and to achieve confidence among buyers and consumers," Sahas said.

At present, the company produces 5,600 tonnes of chicken and 400 tonnes of pork per month, and exports 4,000 tonnes of chicken and 280 tonnes of pork in the same period. Fifty per cent of its exports go to Europe, 45 per cent to Japan and 5 per cent to other countries including Canada, Singapore and Korea.

 

New IT system to control production, quality and global marketingChulalongkorn University’s Halal Science Centre has joined regional company Halal Global Services to develop a Halal Super Highway to promote Halal foods and products in both domestic and global markets.

As a result, Thailand is expected to become a Halal logistics hub – or so-called Hogistics Hub – for the Southeast Asia region before the end of next year. 

Winai Dahlan, director of the Halal Science Centre, said the super highway would use information technology to administer and manage product quality control from farm to table in order to create consumer confidence and reduce the cost of logistics. It would also increase productivity of Halal foods and products.

He said the super highway would be a one-stop service to facilitate the production and marketing of qualified Halal goods. A high-speed Internet database will be used to manage and control production processes to a high standard of quality, safety and accuracy. International standards and marketing demands will be applied from

the sourcing of raw materials through production, storage, packaging and transportation to delivery, and every stage will be checkable.

The new super highway is expected to become a logistics centre for Halal foods and products within next year, making Thailand a hub for exports and imports of Halal products between Asean countries and the rest of the world.

"The Halal Super Highway and Hogistics Centre will have benefits for Thailand by reducing the cost of logistics. We will be able to use IT to support the supply and value chains from raw materials through production processes to consumers, and this will increase Thailand’s competitive advantage," Winai said.

Halal Global Services’ managing director Supachai Keowsiri said his company would develop an information infrastructure to support and promote Hal-Q accredited Halal foods and products on both domestic and global markets. Hal-Q stands for hygiene, assurance, liability and quality of Halal food. It comes with Halal-GMP (Halal – good manufacturing practices) and Halal-HACCP (Halal – hazard analysis critical control point). The standards and food safety systems guarantee hygienic Halal food for Islamic consumers. 

The company also has a role as a distribution channel for Thai Halal foods and products via e-business transactions or e-commerce, inviting orders from consumers around the world via the Internet.

"I think the Hogistics hub will have an important role in new business transactions because it will welcome more than 1.8 billion Muslims from 50 countries, allowing customers to order Thai Halal foods and products with high quality standards in a worldwide e-trade environment. Consumers and suppliers will also be able to check on their purchases and track information," he said.

The global Halal market for products and services is worth more than US$330 billion (Bt11.67 trillion) per year, and includes major components in the EU and US. At present, Thailand has less than a 1 per cent share of this market, so it will benefit from becoming a Halal logistics hub for Southeast Asia, distributing Thai Halal foods and products to global markets, Supachai said.
 

Good support from the government and the high quality of local software developers are the main reasons French entrepreneur Fabrice Alizon was attracted to Thailand to set up a software-outsourcing business here.

Alizon had been working in France for the world’s fourth-largest auto-maker when he decided in 2007 to establish his own companies in Asia. He chose Thailand as the location for his software development centre and head office.

The company, Strategic Software Solutions (S-Cube), is located in the Software Park Building and specialises in offshore software-outsourcing services for customers in Europe.

Alizon said the Thai government paid a lot of attention to the software industry and had many attractive support programmes for foreign software businesses. For example, his company receives investment privileges, including eight years of exemption from taxes, from the Board of Investment. It also receives advice, promotional support and coordination and rental space from Software Park Thailand.

The company’s core enterprises are business solutions and software development using two main technologies: Java and .Net platforms. Therefore, as well as government support, the availability of software developers who are skilled in Java and .Net technologies was another factor that attracted him to Thailand. Most importantly though, the cost of software engineers in Thailand is 30 per cent less than that in India.

"There are good numbers of quality software engineers in Thailand and importantly they are cheaper than in India. Currently, the company employs 10 software developers and all of them are Thais," Alizon said.

S-Cube’s business solutions include business intelligence, web applications and services, and engineering and supply chain systems. Its software developments include platform and customised systems, ad-hoc applications and e-solutions.

The company provides complete transparency throughout its outsourcing services with five steps of software development, from understanding the key aspects of a customer’s requirements through specific questioning, to pre-planning, development, testing and reporting.

"With our result-driven approach, customers can follow each phase of the development online. We also provide internal testing to ensure we achieve the required quality. Each step of development is discussed and validated with our customers," Alizon said.

Thailand’s broadband Internet infrastructure is of sufficient quality to support S-Cube’s offshore software-outsourcing activities. All software solutions developed by the company are sold in Europe, especially in France and England, to four main categories of customers, in the banking, insurance, financial and telecommunications industries.

The company is planning to expand its business to the United States in the future and is seeking customers – especially multinational companies – in Thailand.

Expanding its business markets brings the concern of finding more highly qualified software engineers. At present, Thailand has between 4,000 and 5,000 professional software programmers and it’s hoped that the number will reach 10,000 within five years.

Alizon admitted that the availability of skillful software engineers in the Java and .Net technologies in Thailand was a concern, even though there were many of them. The challenge of an offshore-service business, he said, was to balance the number of good software engineers and the number of outsourcing jobs.

Thailand’s universities produce many thousands of software engineering graduates. Moreover, many local software companies are now adopting the international CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) certification, and this is a vital factor in advancing not only the experience of local software engineers, but their familiarity with effective software-process improvement and development, he said.

"Thailand is a good destination for software businesses in terms of cost and the availability of skilled software engineers. There is no disappointment involved in setting up a business presence here to provide offshore software-outsourcing services to customers around the world," Alizon said.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/30098692/Local-support,-expertise-pay-off-for-French-developer

Thailand’s oldest and largest public hospital, Siriraj, has invested Bt200 million in a hospital information system in a bid to improve overall management and enhance the efficiency of its healthcare services.

 

"It is the first major software investment by Siriraj Hospital in the past 10 years, as the hospital had been developing solutions by itself system by system, leading to problems in managing the hospital’s information," said Viroje Chongkolwatana, deputy dean of information technology at Siriraj Hospital’s Faculty of Medicine and project manager.

 

"Normally, we don’t have a specific software investment budget as we do in-house development. This [new] investment is outside Siriraj’s annual IT investment budget [hardware, networking and security] of about Bt150 million to Bt200 million," said Viroje.

 

The new investment covers implementation of the Enterprise Healthcare Information System (EHIS) provided by the Australian-based IBA Health Group’s iSOFT Thailand. Full implementation is scheduled to take one year.

The EHIS at the 121-year-old hospital comprises five main modules: patient administration system (PAS) and billing, pharmacy, clinical and maternity, blood bank and dental.

 

These modules have been divided into three phases.

The first is the PAS and blood bank, which was implemented last month.

The second – covering clinical and maternity, and dental – is scheduled to go live in September.

The billing system will be implemented by year-end in the final phase.

"The project will completely go live early next year after the entire project’s implementation is completed by the end of this year," said Viroje.

The EHIS will encourage the hospital to develop further electronic systems, such as e-medicine ordering and e-patient records, and provide better healthcare services to patients with greater accuracy.

Viroje said Siriraj’s hospital information system was very large scale, as it had to cover 3 million outpatients and 80,000 inpatients per year and an average daily workload of 10,000 outpatients. The system also involves 1,200 doctors and 12,000 hospital staff.

 

Siriraj’s current databases are located separately and not linked, slowing the hospital down when it comes to disbursement through funds like the Social Security Office, the National Health Security Office and the Comptroller-General’s Department.

 

"iSOFT’s EHIS will make overall management easier for us, because it is a Web-based system supporting the large scale of concurrent use and supporting integration with other organisations. If we perform better, our patients will benefit and receive better services that are 30-40-per-cent faster," said Viroje.

iSOFT Asia president and CEO Wim Botermans said landing the largest hospital as its first customer in Thailand had led the company to establish a representative office – iSOFT Thailand – in Bangkok, with 50 local staff. This is its second-largest operation in Asia after Malaysia, which employs 220 people.

"We have been here three years, but were known as IBA Health (Thailand). Australia’s IBA Heath Group acquired UK-based iSOFT in October 2007, and we come back to Thailand now with our first large deal, with Siriraj Hospital," said Botermans.

 

He said the global economic crisis had had little effect on the healthcare industry, especially regarding the government’s healthcare budget.

Research firm Gartner said Asia’s healthcare industry was expected to grow by 5-10 per cent this year, with the industry’s IT spending normally 10-15 per cent of its overall investment budget per year.

 

"Asia is the important market for us, with around 60 per cent of the world’s population. More people means a greater need for healthcare," said Botermans.

He said the company planned to win contracts with one or two more large Thai public hospitals this year for a similar level of investment to that of Siriraj Hospital.

 

Normally, 80-90 per cent of company revenue in Asia is from public hospitals, with 10-20 per cent coming from private operators.(Published on March 20, 2009 in The Nation Newspaper)

 

The Information and Communications Technology Ministry is soon to begin pilot operations of a Single Window Entry project, aimed at simplifying import and export documentation, including customs and logistics requirements.

The project will support the National Single Window scheme and pave the way for an Asean Single Window, establishment of which is part of the Asean Free Trade Area agreement.

It aims to allow exporters, importers, customs brokers and agencies to exchange shipment information via a Single Window Entry [a single electronic document] without the need for duplicating the data and raising the risk of data inconsistency. 

A ministry adviser on Thailand’s Single Window e-Logistics Project, Somnuk Keretho, said the pilot Single Window Entry project would begin in the first half of this year.

It will relate electronic documents and business transactions via an online business process developed using open-source software. In its pilot stage, the project will focus on sugar and jasmine rice transactions from Thailand to a country such as The Philippines, and on Crocodile theatre products, which are imported from the United States and re-exported to Switzerland, therefore involving both import and export transactions.

The one-year pilot project will be a case study or prototype involving business transactions between government agencies and private businesses via an online network. These will include government to business, government to government, business to business and business to government transactions. The aim is to create cost efficiency, reduce time and create productivity through business processes and transactions.

The pilot will operate via an online network under the National Single Window Scheme or the National Single Window Exchange Scheme before the Single Window Entry scheme for general products is officially introduced in the next couple years.

"The pilot project will help to reduce logistics costs and increase responsiveness, reliability and security for business as a whole. It will also create additional value for the logistics industry and related businesses under National Single Window e-Logistics," Somnuk said.

He said Thailand aimed to reduce logistics costs in trade transactions from 19 per cent in 2007 to 14 per cent by 2011. By the end of this year, the government plans to provide customs paperless services and enable other government agencies to exchange e-documents such as e-permits and requesting forms through a National Single Window with customs.

The Customs Department will spend Bt300 million this year to develop an electronic documents exchange hub to operate with the National Single Window scheme. The hub will be a data exchange centre for e-document exchange, data harmonization and interoperability of e-documents between government agencies related to import and export products, he said.

The government will also set up and develop a National Root Certification Authority this year to support e-Signatures from both domestic and international sources.

"The government will connect all government agencies related to import and export via the National Single Window, which will reduce the time needed to manage the document process and reduce the number of days required for exporting from the current 24 days to 15 by 2010, which will help to increase productivity and create advantages for the country," Somnuk said.

He said Thailand would also establish a data exchange with other countries before 2015. The exchange will connect with 10 countries in Southeast Asia using the Asean Single Window and with 21 Asia-Pacific countries under the APEC Single Window.