Apart from your own buyers other prospective customers from emarketplace community are able to view your products in e-catalog, which in turn will bring you new contacts and sales.

Create products for sale offers You should create sales offer of your primary products that you carry most of time and post them on emarketplace. Many emarketplaces have options to sell products with different procedures. You can make offer to sell access inventories through dynamic market, also called auction, you can make hot offers with time limit, etc. This is an extra sales channel in beginning, which might grow into your primary one!

Involve your buyers and sellers If you would like to use an emarketplace most effectively, you have to get your suppliers and buyers on board too. Supply chain management solution that usually comes with an emarketplace allows you to reduce operational costs significantly.

- Encourage your buyers to send request for quote for a product through inbuilt system of emarketplace.

- Make strict rules within your company to send all quotes exclusively through emarketplace.

- Ask your buyers to send Purchase Orders to your company via emarketplace.

- Bill all your clients using invoicing system of emarketplace.

- Manage shipping and handling though emarketplaces.

- Convince your suppliers to use same emarketplace so that even as a buyer you can get benefits of a B2B exchange.

Complete adoption of an emarketplace will help a company gain numerous benefits. The following figures taken from various research notes emphasize importance of e-marketplace in today’s business world.

- Thanks to emarketplace, companies can reduce purchase order processing cost from US $75 to less than US $10.

- By automating sales and customer support processes companies can lower overhead costs up to 25 – 30% easily.

- Companies also can reduce more than five percent of their maintenance, repair and operation by incorporating e-business solutions, which are integral parts of any emarketplace.

- Business process automation using B2B emarketplace helps companies decreasing of document errors from 20 percent to less than one percent.

B2B Emarketplace solutions are great opportunities

The famous inventor Thomas Edison once told, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

Company executives are by no means afraid of hard work, but unfortunately many of them have colossal fear of high technology and because of this reluctant to explore new Internet-based technologies to their advantage. If you are one of them, be assured that knowledge required to adopt emarketplace to your business and manage it properly is easy to learn and implement.

Add Profit from Value Added Services

Once exchange is set as primary sales channel, available free resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of services that exchange may offer also can be used to generate more value.

Reduce Order Processing Cost

The supply chain solutions of a B2B exchange may allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.

Sales and support costs

By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 25-30% easily.

Inventory keeping costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.

Since an existing B2B exchange may not have all necessary features and functions, a good option is to build a private exchange based on one’s own specific business process automation need. This exchange, at its minimum, should be able to cover major portion of supply chain and inventory control.

The following elements should be integrated to create substantial value to a private B2B exchange:

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is core solution of an exchange and can deliver great values to existing systems. Implementation of this solution will help achieve incredibly high return on investment. Business process automation in this component of exchange includes both supplier and buyer–side quotation, requisition, purchase order and invoice.

Marketplace

This is venue where exchange owner company will post their products for sale. A shopping cart should be integrated to electronic marketplace in order to automate buying process. The offered-for-sale products will be directly related to inventory control management component of exchange.

Auction

Electronic auction system can use both English and Dutch auction methods. For convenience auction component can be integrated to electronic marketplace. Online auction helps liquidate surplus goods easily.

Reverse Auction

This solution allows automate electronic procurement, where suppliers compete for a business deal real time online.

Members Storefront

The participants of Private Exchange – both buyers and sellers of exchange owner company get a Storefront that reflects profile of company, their products and other information.

Forum

A Forum or Discussion Board is an organized, on-line interactive message board where participants conduct discussion on a set of topics by posting questions, comments and responses.

Directory of Companies

This is a listing of all registered participants – buyers and sellers of exchange owner company – either by business category or by alphabetical order. An advanced search engine tool can be incorporated in order to find a company based on data provided.

E–catalog

E–catalog is a hierarchy of product and service categories. All products and services handled by exchange owner company should be consolidated in catalog.

Private B2B exchange is a powerful concept, which engulfs a fairly big portion of business processes requiring automation. This is more like a business ecosystem that has an ability to change way companies think and do business and create tremendous value to their owners.