Aliant chooses BCE Emergis and Ariba for B2B e-commerce solution
0 comments Posted by Mark Dev at 3:56 PMFive-year agreement brings leading-edge marketplace to
Aliant's subsidiaries and suppliers
Saint John/Montreal, September, 6, 2000 -BCE Emergis and Ariba
today announced they have signed a five-year, multi-million
dollar agreement with Aliant Inc. to provide a fully-managed
business-to-business corporate marketplace and e-procurement
solution. The agreement will extend to all Aliant's subsidiaries
and approximately 400 of their major suppliers across North
America.
Aliant, which includes NBTel, IslandTel, Maritime Telegraph and
Telephone Company (MTT), and NewTel, will be the first large
corporation in Atlantic Canada to benefit from the BCE Emergis
e-procurement solution, a fully-managed Internet-based
marketplace featuring Ariba's (R) B2B Commerce platform.
The integrated solution will create economies of scale and supply
chain efficiencies for Aliant, its subsidiaries and suppliers.
Aliant expects to improve the management of its $800 million
(Cdn) in annual purchases which include indirect and direct
goods.
"This initiative will streamline our procurement process and make
it more cost effective, as spending is directed through the B2B
e-procurement solution," said Perry Jarvis, Director of
Procurement for Aliant. "By giving our employees and suppliers a
common e-commerce environment, we can leverage our appreciable
buying power to create improved economies of scale."
"Through this agreement, we are extending our e-commerce
expertise into Atlantic Canada and to Aliant's large group of
national suppliers," said Christian Trudeau, Executive Vice
President and Chief Operating Officer, BCE Emergis. "Furthermore,
it expands on our existing relationship with the Aliant companies
that already market our services in their existing portfolio of
e-business solutions."
"This agreement with Aliant is further proof of the strength and
success of Ariba's alliance with BCE Emergis," said Kevin Dwyer,
Vice President of Ariba Canada. "Ariba and BCE Emergis are
committed to helping Aliant receive a fast and significant return
on their investment and to improve their overall bottom line,
through B2B eCommerce efficiencies."
The Emergis enabled marketplace, which embeds the Ariba B2B
Commerce Platform, helps companies realize greater economies of
scale and commerce process efficiencies by providing an open
trading environment - via the internet - rich in services such as
payment, business document exchange, order management and
security services. With the Emergis B2B e-Commerce infrastructure
and the Ariba B2B Commerce Platform, Aliant employees can
electronically approve and aggregate corporate purchasing from
each employee's desktop and direct spending to preferred
suppliers, that can also benefit from the rich service
environment of the Emergis enabled marketplace.
The Aliant group of advanced technology companies (TSE:AIT) and
its staff of 10,000 professionals deliver full service,
integrated solutions through its core lines of business: wireline
and wireless telecommunications, information technology, remote
communications services, and internet-based business solutions.
From its base in Canada, Aliant serves North American and
international customers. For more information, visit Aliant at
www.aliant.ca.
Ariba, Inc. is the leading business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce
platform and network services provider. Through the Ariba B2B
Commerce platform - an open, end-to-end infrastructure of
interoperable software solutions and hosted Web-based commerce
services -- the company enables efficient on-line trade,
integration and collaboration between B2B marketplaces, buyers,
suppliers and commerce service providers. The global reach and
best-of-breed functionality of the Ariba B2B Commerce platform
creates Internet-driven economies of scale and process
efficiencies for leading companies around the world. More
information can be found at www.ariba.com.
BCE Emergis delivers network-centric e-commerce services that
significantly improve customer processes through secure B2B
exchanges. Combining e-commerce, e-payment and security services,
BCE Emergis offers clients in the healthcare, financial services,
telecommunications and transportation industries a full suite of
core and vertical-specific services that are the essential
building blocks and infrastructure required for e-commerce. BCE
Emergis is one of the top e-commerce providers in North America
and its shares are included in the TSE 100 Composite Index. For
more information, please refer to www.emergis.com.
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements
that reflect the current views and/or expectations of BCE Emergis
with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such
statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and
assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly.
Source : bce.ca
Good buyer, supplier relationships help ensure healthy B2B solutions
1 comments Posted by Mark Dev at 3:55 PMBusiness to business, or B2B, e-commerce swept through the business world with huge potential. But the ride continues to be bumpy. In today's economy, many companies are re-evaluating and re-strategizing the scope and scale of their B2B business models.
Online exchanges and reverse auction sites, which were considered to be the keys to success, failed to deliver. Yet there are solutions, especially from the perspective of specialized buying, that can make B2B really pay off.
Buying cheapest doesn't work well
First, the big problems. In reverse auctions, the lowest price wins. These are unfavorable for suppliers that have to whittle away profit margins to win bids. In fact, suppliers are better off not competing on an cost-only basis that eliminates the "value add" they bring to the entire supply chain process.
With no real way to differentiate their products, these exchanges did a huge disservice to the suppliers. Buyers, who looked like the overall winners, were quick to discover that buying from the cheapest supplier actually added more problems. Since the most important part of the supply process is the actual delivery of the product, failure to deliver results in mismanaged expectations and missed deadlines.
But the theory by Nobel laureate John Nash -- made famous in "A Beautiful Mind" -- lets companies interact with each other to maximize both individual payoffs and overall outcome. The problem, though, is that competing suppliers try to undercut each other on price, which weakens suppliers in general since each wants to reach their own best outcome.
Although economists dismiss this sort of behavior as "irrational," it is more the norm than the exception. Suppliers cannot work together on a long-term basis because it is hard to predict what a competing supplier is planning to do. The short-term payoff from a competing supplier's ability to find and "cut a better deal" is enough of a reason. That makes it virtually imperative that they team up with a buyer, and vice versa.
Achieving the B2B solution
Mutually beneficial collaboration is only possible when different players have access to full information, which is never possible with a competitor in a pure, competitive market. Therefore, the obvious question is whether the supplier would attempt to take advantage of the relationship with the buyer.
The answer is "no," because pivotal to this relationship is "full information." The buyer still has access to prices from other suppliers, and it's in the buyer's best interest for the supplier to stay away from a monopolistic approach to pricing. Sustaining a good relationship allows the buyer to prosper from its superior quality and ability to deliver.
Buyers can have any number of such partnerships, with "partners" either in the same competitive space or mutually exclusive in the products and services they provide.
To make such a system work, the buyer's system should be able to rate:
• Product quality.
• Mean Time to Failure of the product.
• Ability to deliver the product on time.
• Ability to maintain competitive price compared with other suppliers of similar scale and size.
This allows buyers to keep suppliers honest, and for suppliers to keep existing business by maintaining a high rating on buyers' systems. And if two or more suppliers in the same space maintain a consistently high "buyer rating," buyers can determine the supplier for a particular product by awarding the contract on a predetermined basis, or in a specific order.
Any supplier failing to maintain the high rating can be either penalized by being skipped over for a contract or being completely removed from the system for a certain time period. Along with the obvious cost benefits, this system includes all the value adds such as superior quality, reliable delivery and competitive pricing.
The timelessness of Nash's theory requires that the underlying system stand the test of time. In the B2B world, both longevity and adaptability of the technology are important. In terms of longevity, the technology should not have to be changed often. From the adaptability perspective, a company needs to interact with different systems. An XML-based solution would be ideal.
When done right the first time, this B2B solution can be implemented in about 90 days or less with just a couple of people -- and B2B's promise of enhancing specialized buying is just around the corner.
Source : houston.bizjournals.com
Mutually beneficial collaboration is only possible when different players have access to full information, which is never possible with a competitor in a pure, competitive market. Therefore, the obvious question is whether the supplier would attempt to take advantage of the relationship with the buyer.
The answer is "no," because pivotal to this relationship is "full information." The buyer still has access to prices from other suppliers, and it's in the buyer's best interest for the supplier to stay away from a monopolistic approach to pricing. Sustaining a good relationship allows the buyer to prosper from its superior quality and ability to deliver.
Buyers can have any number of such partnerships, with "partners" either in the same competitive space or mutually exclusive in the products and services they provide.
To make such a system work, the buyer's system should be able to rate:
• Product quality.
• Mean Time to Failure of the product.
• Ability to deliver the product on time.
• Ability to maintain competitive price compared with other suppliers of similar scale and size.
This allows buyers to keep suppliers honest, and for suppliers to keep existing business by maintaining a high rating on buyers' systems. And if two or more suppliers in the same space maintain a consistently high "buyer rating," buyers can determine the supplier for a particular product by awarding the contract on a predetermined basis, or in a specific order.
Any supplier failing to maintain the high rating can be either penalized by being skipped over for a contract or being completely removed from the system for a certain time period. Along with the obvious cost benefits, this system includes all the value adds such as superior quality, reliable delivery and competitive pricing.
The timelessness of Nash's theory requires that the underlying system stand the test of time. In the B2B world, both longevity and adaptability of the technology are important. In terms of longevity, the technology should not have to be changed often. From the adaptability perspective, a company needs to interact with different systems. An XML-based solution would be ideal.
When done right the first time, this B2B solution can be implemented in about 90 days or less with just a couple of people -- and B2B's promise of enhancing specialized buying is just around the corner.
Source : houston.bizjournals.com
Business to business e-commerce is on the 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 the Internet! Contrary to popular believe, this means, B2B e-commerce has still large potential to grow Internet has the capacity of changing the conventional way of doing business.
Today, you can not only buy and sell your products and services on the Internet, you can, virtually, shift all your business processes to online solutions as well. If you take advantages of new Internet based technologies, the 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.business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business3t)LNew 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 the B2B exchange, where you are a member. business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business
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 the marketplace. A populated marketplace can easily become a good sales channel for a supplier.
Electronic catalog: As a member of the B2B exchange, you are allowed to add all your products or services to the consolidated online repository of the exchange. Adding your products to the repository helps to create online standardize electronic version of your product specification - if you don't have that before - and use the same catalog with other electronic sales systems - even with other B2B exchanges using XML interface.forum. You can publish sales offer of your entire catalog to the marketplace, eliminating a need for other web presence.
You can add products or services to the 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 the marketplace of the exchange seamlessly. You can make a web store from scratch with the help of integrated website builder of the B2B exchange as well.
Auctions: One of the great features of many B2B exchange is their auction systems. As we all know from the 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.business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business As a supplier, you can participate in those tenders without any extra cost involved.
Low customer acquisition costforum. Your mere presence in the B2B exchange might bring you new customers! Since the buyers come to the exchange themselves; your cost of getting customers through this channel is relatively low in comparison to other traditional channels. You can even increase your visibility by advertising in the key places of the exchange, where your prospective buyers frequently visit. Being highly targeted, these ads produce incredible results.business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business9 Improve customer service business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil Ability to have constant interaction through the B2B exchange allows you to serve your customers better. You can track the whole ordering process from payment to delivery and bring greater efficiency in customer service.
The integrated functions of an exchange such as sales management, internal messaging service, lead management, etc. also help you managing customers service process effectively.business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business When needed, you can instantly update your catalog and inform customers about changes.
Whether you are launching a new product or having a web seminar, through the B2B exchange you can share the information more efficiently. Some B2B Exchanges use sophisticated knowledge management systems to create, capture, reprocess and reutilize information intended for specific group of audience. These contents or information can be displayed on demand or in time to a member - when needed. Business processes management
One of the primary objectives of using B2B exchanges for you should be their ability to handle, run and administer various business processes. These solutions assist you to streamline your business, reduce overhead costs and reduce documentary errors. business forum,trade forum,business opportunity,Business China,Business India,Brazil business
Using technologies in a bid to streamline business processes like supply chain is nothing new. Companies have been using various solutions to support product development, customer service, procurement and other integral processes for many years. Before the Internet era, many companies have invested enormous amount of money in infrastructure building to automate supply chain process. Today, thanks to the Internet, even small companies have opportunity to use highly sophisticated supply chain solutions for a small cost. Many B2B exchanges, such as Rusbiz.com, allow small companies to use supply chain management solution for a small fee. The major benefits of using supply chain solutions include.
