Business Focus is a weekly column providing at-a-glance
statistics and commentary on spending priorities and trends in
particular sectors. This week we look at food and drink
wholesalers.
Food and drink wholesalers spend well above the UK average on
IT, with large wholesalers investing £12,836 per desktop each year
- more than 50% higher than the all-industry average of £8,455.
Among smaller food wholesalers, the average spend per desktop is
£3,839, which is well clear of the all-sector average spend of
£3,132 for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Supply chain efficiency is the top IT priority for food and
drink wholesalers. As e-procurement initiatives increase, supplier
agreements are monitored in real time and optimised, and warehouse
operations are consolidated and rationalised. Management and
operational improvements are also important to wholesalers, with
mobile working a key route to enhancing productivity and improving
customer service.
Spending by food wholesalers also outstrips IT spending among
the food retailers that they supply. Large food and drink retailers
spend £10,620 per desktop - more than 20% less than large
wholesalers.
Larger food wholesalers are markedly big spenders on hardware,
with nearly 33% of their IT budget being swallowed up by
investments in high-specification back-end systems to support the
supply chain.
However, larger wholesalers spend proportionally less on
services (30%) than the UK-wide average (36%). This is perhaps not
surprising given that supply chain systems are a core part of the
wholesale business and can be a key competitive differentiator
among companies, making firms less likely to outsource them than
businesses in other sectors.
Methodology
The analysis is based on Computer Weekly's database of more than
60,000 IT budget holders, twice yearly user IT expenditure surveys,
CBI/Kew senior executive surveys, government surveys, government
demographic data, HM Treasury economic forecasts and Cambridge
Econometrics industry sector forecasts.
Further details
http://www.kewassociates.co.uk
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