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The News – 04/11/01
Confidence in B2B Exchanges Flows
Well if you’re not confused about the B2B exchange
marketplace, you’re not paying attention. The March issue of manufacturing-oriented
magazine, Start, quotes Jupiter Research as saying independent-sponsored
marketplaces (ISMs) are gaining speed. ISMs, which I call Captive Exchanges,
are business-to-business groups created by industry leaders. Jupiter says
they are moving online faster, and enabling business operations sooner than
expected. “More than 41% of 58 ISMs already have the ability to conduct
business online, and another 33% were speculated to have launched by the
end of 2000,” the magazine said.
In the last edition of StratVantage News Summary, I reported
Ariba’s gloomy prediction that all public exchanges were doomed. This was a
particularly interesting statement, considering that Ariba’s stock is
floundering, and statements of doom and gloom won’t do anything to enhance
its price.
So I guess, when you look at it, Jupiter’s statement really
says nothing about the viability of the online exchange, just that they’re
really good at spending venture capital getting to market. And also good at
getting industry analysts to write favorable analyses, it would appear.
In the same issue, Start quotes AMR Research regarding consortium
trading exchanges (CTEs). CTEs face ten trouble spots:
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premature promises of functionality
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- long
delays in the delivery of collaborative commerce applications
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lack of consensus about where functionality should reside
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- cost
to integrate back-end systems
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need to budget for the total cost of the exchange
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- supplier
recruitment, participation and integration
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competition among the best-of-breed vendors
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marketplace-to-marketplace integration
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Other than that, they face clear sailing!
These varying viewpoints underscore the importance of
businesses formulating a solid business case before getting involved in B2B
exchanges. Concentrating on bringing efficiency to your own supply chain is
likely to be more fruitful in the short run.
Start
Magazine
Gratuitous Fun
OK, this has nothing to do with business or eCommerce,
or anything that I usually write about. It’s just so doggone cool.
Here’s a site where you can make your own license
plate images using your favorite words or phrases. Do I need to go on?
Acme
License Maker
Can’t Get
Enough of ME?
In
the unlikely event that you want more of my opinions, I’ve started a
Weblog. It’s the fashionable thing for pundits to do, and I’m doing it too.
A Weblog is a datestamped collection of somewhat random thoughts and ideas
assembled on a Web page. If you’d like to subject the world to your
thoughts, as I do, you can create your own Weblog. You need to have a Web
site that allows you FTP access, and the free software from www.blogger.com. This allows you to
right click on a Web page and append your pithy thoughts to your Weblog.
I’ve
dubbed my Weblog entries “Stratlets”, and they are available at www.stratvantage.com/stratlets/.
Let me know what you think.
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