B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

E-Marketplaces and Collaborative Networks 455
an infrastructure to execute transportation processes from dock-todock.
• Order management — E-marketplaces should offer full order management
services that can enable participant companies to effectively
manage all aspects of purchases and sales order management. The order
management system should automate the generation and distribution
of documents, such as purchase orders (POs), PO changes, PO acknowledgments,
invoices and goods receipts. It should tightly integrate all
participants of a supply chain by enabling communication with third
party financial institutions for electronic settlement, logistics provision
and warehouse facilities. A system that provides end-to-end, realtime
transparency of order flow throughout its lifecycle helps in
drastically reducing the cash-to-cash cycle, minimizes the day's sales
outstanding and makes supply chains more responsive.
• Electronic Bill Presentation and Payment (EBPP) — According to
the consulting firm Ovum, companies can save up to 70% in processing
costs associated with distributing paper-based invoices by using EBPP.
E-marketplaces should offer EBPP services, so that companies can
streamline financial process management by selecting terms and
schedules that fit their size and requirements. One of the best examples
of EBPP service deployment is that of GE Global eXchange that has
a billion transactions worth $1 trillion annually.
• Secured messaging & data exchange — E-marketplaces should
support secured messaging and data exchange services that accept
and transmit data in various formats and communication protocols
(such as ANSI XI2, UN/EDIFACT, EDI-INT, CXML, RosettaNet,
HTTPS, SSL, FTP and other popular standards) that the participants
use.
Collaboration
• Product collaboration — If an e-marketplace provides product
collaboration services, the participating companies can collaborate in
distributed product development to create innovative and profitable
products (see Figure 15.9). This is usually a hosted subscription