B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

Components, Benefits, Challenges and Applications of B2B Integration 35
swiftly, helping customer retention. B2Bi is the evolution of how close
a company can get to its customers.
For example, General Motors Corp. is working with Reynolds and
Reynolds to deploy online software that will help the world's largest
automaker integrate its supply-chain systems with the inventory
management systems of GM's 8,000 North American dealers.
The primary goal of the $150 million-a-year alliance is to give
consumers a seamless brand experience, whether they walk through
the door of a dealer or click on a mouse. The software will link GM
and its dealers as well as support the automaker's current BuyPower
consumer Web service. The software is designed to make it easier for
all involved to share information. Consumers will be able to track the
status of their vehicle orders like FedEx customers track packages. GM
dealers, for example, will gain access to the service history of a specific
customer's vehicle.
2.3.8. Opportunity to re-architect internal systems
Companies seeking B2Bi quickly face the poor architecture of many
core business systems and current infrastructure, which hardly provide
an adequate base for an integrated future. B2Bi presents a tremendous
opportunity to companies to clear up the mess within their organization.
The properly designed architecture and infrastructure, which fully
leverage the existing systems, will be able to conduct secure, nonrepudiated
transactions in real-time, be designed to sustain competitive
advantages and be flexible enough to adapt quickly to new technologies
and business demands.
2.4. B2Bi Challenges
Business process and application integration, both between and within
enterprises, is a lot more complex than companies think. Companies
tend to underestimate the complexity of B2Bi, technically and from a
business value proposition. All of the major 15-20 domains of B2Bi,
such as customer relationship management, supply chain management,
operations management and planning have multiple (4-5) sub-domains.