B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

446 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
• Secured transactions end-to-end;
• Personalized services with full privacy protection;
• Enhanced collaboration for design, development and fulfillment of
new products; and
• 24/7/365 access and support.
Benefits to buyers
E-marketplaces offer several benefits to buyers; for example, reducing
order processing and e-procurement costs by as much as 60-70% per
order. They are able to achieve such drastic reductions because of
automating purchasing processes and workflow; obtaining greater
transparency in product lines and suppliers; and aggregating purchases
through the exchange. Participating buyers no longer have to wait
endlessly for catalogs to arrive by mail and have manual intervention to
place orders by phone or fax.
By becoming a participant member of a B2B e-marketplace, buyers
get the following services:
• Access to multiple suppliers across the globe;
• Real-time information pertaining to product offerings, product
promotions, discontinued product closeouts and new product pricing;
• Direct comparison of prices, terms and specifications;
• Filtered and personalized industry-wide contents relevant to their
interests;
• Order fulfillment information that includes order status, shipping dates
and back orders;
• Contract management information that includes contract changes and
expirations; and
• Purchasing pattern-monitoring services that allow effective inventory
maintenance.
Benefits to sellers
E-marketplaces have several benefits to offer sellers, including the
lowering costs from process integration and collaborative supply chain.
Some of the tangible benefits are: