ICT and e-Business in the Pulp, Paper and Paper ... - empirica

Pulp, paper and paper products
Peer-to-peer trading portals on company websites
While waiting until such more advanced forms of e-business are more common, most
large P&P manufacturers have established extranet-like portals on their website for
suppliers and customers. The "coMMunity" portal by Mayr-Melnhof Cardboard Group
(see following case study) is an example of such an approach. Their portal supports trade
with smaller customers who do not have an ERP system, and enables these companies
to manage and maintain a well-structured overview of the status of all orders and
supply fulfilment in all their business with Mayr-Melnhof.
Servicing trading partners is certainly an important aspect of this activity; however, this
portal approach is not entirely a selfless act – both parties are expected to profit from
ensuring higher transparency of all ongoing and completed business processes between
the partners.
A simple example showing how portal providers benefit as well is the use of these portals
for communicating the latest version of the terms of business. Previously any change
would have to be communicated to all business partners by sending out printed copies of
the new terms. Companies can now simply refer to the respective document on the web.
Only few countries still insist, in case of a change, that terms have to be sent by mail.
This not only is a better and faster way to substitute the formerly paper-based processes,
but – interestingly – is also found to result in fewer complaints compared to the earlier
way of communicating changes. It seems that firms are less annoyed about a change of
the terms (with reference to a website) than when receiving the changed text in full detail.
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