Business to business e-commerce is on
rise! Worldwide B2B e-commerce revenues are estimated to reach around US$ 2 trillion in 2004. This is a significant leap from last year’s US$ 1.4 trillion. However, according to a recent survey, although, more than 70% of companies have already used Internet as a purchasing channel, a mere ten percent of their overall spending is directed via Internet! Contrary to popular believe, this means, B2B e-commerce has still large potential to grow.Internet has capacity of changing conventional way of doing business. Today, you can not only buy and sell your products and services on Internet, you can, virtually, shift all your business processes to online solutions as well. If you take advantages of new Internet based technologies, outcome would be tremendously beneficial to your business. How to do this without spending a fortune and not putting a huge pressure on scarce corporate resources? The possible answer could be B2B exchanges!
A B2B exchange is an online marketplace, where buyers, sellers and intermediaries form communities, exchange views, offer products and services, and conduct business transactions.
By becoming a member of a B2B exchange you can benefit in both cost-saving and revenue increase – two primary requirements of productivity increase.
New sales channel
By becoming a member of a B2B exchange, you open a low cost, highly functional and easy-to-use sales channel for your company. You expose your company to a new targeted audience that otherwise would have been untapped. Prospective customers can buy products and services from you, using various venues and features of B2B exchange, where you are a member.
Marketplace: All B2B exchanges include a marketplace, where suppliers can post sales offer of their products and services. Buyers, looking for specific products, can easily find best suppliers that suit them from marketplace. A populated marketplace can easily become a good sales channel for a supplier.
Electronic catalog: As a member of B2B exchange, you are allowed to add all your products or services to consolidated online repository of exchange. Adding your products to repository helps to create online standardize electronic version of your product specification – if you don’t have that before – and use same catalog with other electronic sales systems – even with other B2B exchanges using XML interface.
You can publish sales offer of your entire catalog to marketplace, eliminating a need for other web presence. You can add products or services to repository one by one or you can use XML interface to upload your whole electronic catalog.
Web Store: Some B2B exchanges allow you to convert or integrate your website to their exchange. This helps you to handle sales conveniently from your website and marketplace of exchange seamlessly. You can make a web store from scratch with help of integrated website builder of B2B exchange as well.
Auctions: One of great features of many B2B exchange is their auction systems. As we all know from immense success of Ebay, auctioning is a great way of selling products online. Some exchanges boast reverse auction system, where suppliers bid for a deal posted by a buyer.
