The term ‘electronic commerce’ is often associated with business to consumer (B2C) applications such as on online stores but internet technology is also making its presence felt in the business-to-business (B2B) arena. Three application areas of particular importance to the supply chain are: electronic procurement, B2B information exchange, and online catalogue management.

e-Procurement
The ability to purchase all your organisation’s needs from a one-stop-shop offers logical time and money savings benefits – when that location is a web site and orders can be lodged and processed electronically the business case can become compelling.

Typically, an e-procurement web site allows qualified and registered users to look for buyers or sellers of goods and services who may specify prices or invite bids. Volume purchases may qualify customers for discounts or special offers.

Such sites are designed to streamline a company’s purchasing processes by placing and approving orders and arranging delivery thereby eliminating many paper-based procedures and labour-intensive processes.

B2B Information Exchange | EDI
Electronic data interchange (EDI) opens the way for significant transaction cost savings and better relationships between companies that regularly trade with each other, or trade with high volumes of orders.

EDI reduces reliance on paper or ‘hard copy’ when processing documents such as invoices or purchase orders by enabling direct computer-to-computer processing. The technology and acceptance of such integration has matured along with the reliability of such systems. Any business which receives a large number of standard documents that require significant format shifting or re-keying of data should consider exchanging these documents electronically. This can be achieved in several ways:

• using the integration components on legacy systems (API or web service calls on the application or database)
• using in-house middleware to receive, transform and send data
• using third-party cloud based B2B messaging specialists

Online Catalogue Management

Most organisations have an inventory containing a list of goods, parts and products and services on offer, along with a description, model and order numbers. Converting that information into an electronic format and taking it on-line can represent a major shift forward in efficiency, cost savings and customer service.

Having your product specs and inventory on-line means you can keep it up to date in real time as changes occur, and you can accommodate price increases or discounts, new suppliers or new product ranges, and, importantly, enable integration with in-house or external eCommerce engines.

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