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Revolution Health, the high profile health information company founded by Steve Case, has been through its share of troubles over the last year or so: first it laid off about 60 employees from its Health Networks division eight months ago, and last month it laid off another 50 employees, about 20 percent of its present workforce, reports industry newsletter AISHealth. The company says the latest round of reductions was due to a reorgfollowing its December acquisition of HealthTalk, an online source of chronic-care information and programming, the story says. The company now has about 200 employees.

A not-so-secret-secret: Revolution is exiting out of its B2B services (direct-to-employer Web portal business ), and will only focus on consumer health portal/info, and the company confirmed it...it will continue to sell its portal capabilities through licensing partnerships with distributors such as Medco Health Solutions, the company says.

With this reorg, all of Revolution's acquired businesses will have a single sales force, one content group and one marketing team. The key point is that the company is "yet to show a really cohesive and compelling business strategy," the story mentions.

We have also been hearing some rumblings of the company looking for strategic options...among some of the options we have heard being discussed is outsourcing some or all of the online ad sales to a network like Glam Media or others. Glam has entered into health network sales recently, and has interests in looking at anchor tenants to own in the sector. More when we have more?

Meanwhile, Steve Case spoke at our EconHealth conference earlier this year in March, and the video is embedded below. Click on the "Browse Video List" button to view the two videos in this series.

Source-washingtonpost.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) subsidiary, today announced the expansion of Sterling Collaboration Network (SCN), the company’s hosted service that provides secure connectivity and collaboration between businesses, into Japan, Australia and China. With this solution, more companies will be able to securely and reliably exchange business documents, making it simpler to automate the processes they share with customers, partners and suppliers and, therefore, increase their competitiveness and productivity.

“These are fast-growing markets driven by new trends in B2B infrastructure, modernization, community management/on boarding, multi-enterprise applications, Web services and service oriented architectures (SOA),” said Phil Smith, vice president, global products and marketing, Sterling Collaboration Network, Sterling Commerce. “Now, with the Sterling Collaboration Network in Japan, Australia and China, we’re providing these important markets with a better choice for a market-leading, proven on-demand B2B network solution that will meet their diverse B2B communications needs now and in the future.”

Sterling Commerce is expanding its global network presence in response to customer demand and market opportunities. Global multinational companies facing lengthening supply chains are looking for a complete solution – an integrated, global B2B capability combined with local support and local capabilities – and Sterling Commerce is uniquely positioned to securely and reliably deliver that complete solution. On the strength of its reputation, Sterling Commerce has expanded its network presence significantly in the past year, including a 700 percent increase in contracted spend from European customers.

Sterling Collaboration Network simplifies trading partner relationships by eliminating all paper-based transactions and providing end-to-end visibility and control over the business processes shared with outside companies. Today it manages as many as 4.5 million B2B documents per day with more than 99.9 percent reliability, allowing customers, vendors and suppliers to reliably integrate their electronic processing. Sterling Collaboration Network suite includes the following services: Sterling Information Broker^SM, Community Services, Translation Services, Visibility and Hosted Application Services.

As Sterling Commerce launches in new countries, it will focus support in regional centers that will ensure local language and time zone support as well as appropriate integration resources.

More information about the Sterling Collaboration Network suite can be found online at www.sterlingcommerce.com/Products/Network/.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), helps customers thrive in a global economy by connecting their business communities, processes, people and technology. More than 30,000 customers worldwide – including 80 percent of the Fortune 500 – use Sterling Commerce solutions for business process integration, multi-channel selling, and supply chain fulfillment to improve profitability inside and outside their company walls. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Sterling Commerce has offices in 19 countries and most major cities around the world. More information on the company can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

Most search marketers focus on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. But B2B search marketers also have a growing number of vertical search options. Clicks and leads from these vertical search sites may not yield the same traffic as general search engines, but the percentage of qualified traffic and conversions can increase dramatically with leads from these specialized and vertical business-oriented engines. Here's a roundup of the most important search sites and resources B2B search marketers should be targeting.

While business searchers may start their quest on a general search engine like Google, as they become more informed and progress further in the buying cycle, they often turn to other sources for additional and more detailed information. Many turn to general B2B search engines or head to niche-oriented search sites, where they hope to find fewer extraneous search results and other types of content, such as white papers, case studies, and other content marketing vehicles. The searcher's aim is to get better information and to get it more quickly.

There are good vertical search sites and ones that are struggling to optimize their search technology and their ability to capture and organize information. The best ones deliver comprehensive results in the given niche, provide more focused search results than general search engines, and give searchers the ability to quickly and easily find relevant information.

Good vertical search sites also provide opportunity for B2B marketers, who can generate highly qualified leads and click-through due to the focused demographics of many B2B vertical search sites. That concentrated demographic also allows marketers to precisely target their ad messages and other marketing efforts. Lastly, because vertical searchers are often further in the buying cycle than their general search counterparts, the click-through and leads tend to be more valuable, giving marketers the ability to influence potential buyers as they draw closer to the purchase decision.

As B2B marketing budgets shift more strongly to online opportunities, media companies are beginning to add vertical search as a way to remain authoritative in their niches and to make up for decreasing offline revenues. And with the trend toward vertical search, we see also the growth of companies such as Convera that offer vertical search platforms that shorten the time to market for those wishing to enter the vertical search arena.
Here are some of the more popular B2B search engines:

General B2B search engines

Business.com is far and away the leading general B2B search engine and directory, with six million unique visitors per month. PPC and paid directory inclusion are available to marketers. Sponsored search is syndicated to more than 100 other business sites, such as Forbes and BusinessWeek. In March, Business.com launched Channels, adding two vertical search portals (Money and Technology) to its general search capabilities. Users will benefit from more targeted information and search results; marketers will benefit by reaching a more concentrated market segment.

Several times smaller in traffic than Business.com and part of the iEntry network, Jayde is another B2B search engine and directory. Many of the search results on Jayde have company profiles with links to internal web pages, similar to Google's site links. While Jayde says it crawls sites, it appears that it may only crawl those sites residing in its directory and those specifically identified by Jayde staff. Submitting your site to Jayde's directory for review is free, but you'll have to agree to be on Jayde's list to receive emails sponsored by iEntry's advertisers. If you opt out, your listing can be removed. Paid search is not available.

Zibb is owned by Reed Business, one of the largest business-to-business publishers. General search capabilities are supplemented by the ability to search in a limited number of silos, such as industry news and blogs, the web, and Zibb's directory. Zibb crawls the web, winnows non-B2B content, and organizes the relevant content into taxonomies. Searchers can also drill down into these categories and further refine results by topic, content type, or source. PPC is not directly available; ads are served up by Google. Although it's the smallest of the three general B2B search engines listed here, it is growing. Per Alexa, its traffic has nearly doubled in the last three months.

Industrial search engines and directories

GlobalSpec serves the engineering, manufacturing, and related scientific and technical market segments. Registered users can use the search bar or drill down deeply into product and service categories. Search is also available by needed specs, patent, material properties, news, application notes, part numbers, and standards. While GlobalSpec crawls the web for relevant sites/content, you can also submit a site for consideration. Sales lead and CPC programs are available for marketers, as are sponsored listings.

Similar in traffic to GlobalSpec, ThomasNet serves industrial buyers and sellers. Although there appear to be fewer silos within which to search, there are good options on ThomasNet to narrow search results by geography, certifications and standards, type of company, etc. Also available is the ability to search within CAD files. While GlobalSpec allows users to compare product catalogs of various suppliers, ThomasNet allows users to compare company information on its listed suppliers. The only way into ThomasNet's directory is via paid listing. Banner ads are available to marketers.

Masterseek touts itself as "the world's largest and most comprehensive B2B search engine that connects buyers and suppliers worldwide." Several times smaller in terms of traffic than GlobalSpec or ThomasNet, Masterseek's search options are also more limited, giving users the options to narrow their searches in two silos—companies or products. Its search results are also much more akin to general B2B search engines; the focus is on click-through to the listed sites as opposed to providing more detailed information on the companies or products. Paid search options are available. On Monday, B2bcompass Ltd., parent company of UK-based international B2B search engine b2bcompass.com, signed a letter of intent to acquire the shares of Masterseek in exchange for shares of B2bcompass.

Information technology

Part of the TechTarget network,KnowledgeStorm is the most popular search vehicle in the technology sector. Instead of delivering information and links to relevant pages on the web, KnowledgeStorm delivers links to whitepapers, webcasts, case studies, articles, reports, and analyst reviews. While KnowledgeStorm offers category sponsorships and search ads are served by Google, content marketing is the focus of the site. Users must be registered with KnowledgeStorm to view more detailed search results and must provide further lead information to obtain the actual content.

IT.com uses "dynamic peer ranking" to order its search results, with the goal of mirroring "how a large community of buyers judges each vendor's position in the market." While a general search tool is available, IT.com also offers more narrowed search within defined categories. PPC search-term ads are available. Also available is sponsorship of search categories, where the sponsor's ads appear before the user searches and where the sponsor's brand identity (with link) remains present during all search activity within the sponsored category.

Launched late last month by UK-based Incisive Media, IThound is the latest newcomer to information technology search. Like KnowledgeStorm, it delivers whitepapers, product information, webcasts, and reports. Though there are banner ads on the site, content marketing rules the day at IThound. No AdSense or PPC was noted at this time.

Global trading

Described as the "online dating service for global business," Alibaba boasts 27 million members in more than 200 countries, field sales and marketing offices in more than 30 countries, and more than 5,200 employees. Users search for either buyers or sellers of goods and services around the world. Various advertising opportunities exist. And while you may not have heard of it, it's one of the most popular B2B sites in the world; it has an Alexa traffic rank of 226. In October 2005, Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Inc. formed a long-term strategic partnership. Alibaba.com went public in November 2007, raising nearly $1.5 billion for the company. By comparison, Google raised $1.9 billion in its IPO.

Made-in-China is perhaps the second most popular international B2B trading site (Alexa rank 2607), but, as the name indicates, it is primarily concerned with China. The site offers marketers preferred listing placement and opportunities for banner ads.

TooToo is another global online B2B trading platform, allowing its users to further refine product and company searches by type of business (e.g., manufacturer, wholesaler/distributor, agent) and by standards certifications (e.g., ISO, CE). TooToo claims its site represents eight million manufacturers and three million buying leads. It currently has an Alexa rank of about 7500. The site doesn't appear to offer PPC or banner ads. In addition to search listings, the site offers marketers other premium opportunities such as "showroom" web pages.

There are a number of other global trading sites, such as TradeKey, ttnet.com, and Exporters.sg.

Other vertical search sites

There are a number of other good vertical search engines in various B2B niches, like SearchFinance for corporate finance, Construction.com for the AEC community, Scirus for scientific research, and SearchMedica for medical research.

B2B vertical search is a growing area. Though B2B media companies have been slower to react than their consumer counterparts, many B2B media outlets are entering the fray, such as Incisive Media. Some not-for profit organizations are also entering the space on matters of health and research (e.g., Healia).

Perhaps one of the most targeted niche search site I found was CleanHound, owned by Trade Press Publishing Corporation. CleanHound is the search engine for cleaning professionals, providing "useful and quality information for the janitorial/sanitation executive." While I'm sure this evoked at least a smile in most readers, if the search engine is comprehensive and well known in the industry, you can bet it's a good medium for marketers in that space.

Whether it's organic listings and rankings, directory inclusion, content marketing, PPC, banner ads, or sponsorships, there's plenty of opportunity for marketers to target their efforts more precisely through B2B general and vertical search. You may not get as many clicks or leads, but you'll get a much higher percentage of qualified traffic.

Source: searchengineland.com

Business Community Management (BCM)—there's a new name for you. It certainly was to me when I met the EMEA management team of Inovis, John Redfern - MD, Paul Tatam - Sales & Marketing Director and Stephen Jefferies - Director of Retail. Redfern described BCM as "BCM creates a comprehensive view of an organisation's supply chain by integrating the technology, business processes and communication of the entire business community. By unifying the technology and business community communication, a company can optimise its supply chain and create sustainable value through three key avenues: increasing end-to-end visibility, reducing B2B complexity and automating the entire trading community." Now that seems to be quite a mouthful and you may still not quite get what is involved.

Let's go back to look at a typical supply chain. There you are, a manufacturer of widgets—of course, the best in the market. You have a number of partners who provide services and component parts that help you make your widgets. The first requirement to operate in today's fast changing world is that you have all the necessary systems that allow you to manage your own operations. This is normally provided by an Enterprise Resource Planning package. This helps you manage your sales and purchase orders and their links into your production orders and, importantly, your finance systems. You can manage your own inventory in your own warehouses and WIP on the shop floor. Now all manufacturers have heard of Lean Manufacturing or one of its many derivatives such as TQM, Six Sigma and so on. All these are ways to help the manufacturer reduce their costs through managing their inventory through a just-in-time principal. There is a fundamental key to this—you have to collaborate with your partners. This means you need to share information, make compromises and work for the benefit of all concerned—that, of course, includes the customer. Now come the problems:

* They don't have the same meaning for the data terms that you use
* They don't use the same ERP system as you do
* They have other customers who are your rivals so there is a need to secure sensitive information on both sides
* In a number of scenarios, it is not just 2 companies involved but a plethora—for instance component manufacturer, logistics company and you
* All your current ERPs are not very flexible and business users have developed lots of Microsoft Office based application front-ends
* A high proportion of your orders are in error with a large number resulting in deductions and overpayments
* You have a high number of stock-out situations occurring
* It is costing you between £20–40 a time to resolve data and invoice errors.

So what you need to be able to work this complex environment is something that simplifies it all by taking the complexity away, improving the visibility across the whole supply chain with better security and that provides agile integration between all partners. So what services do you need in place to achieve this?

The first piece is a communications layer that allows all members of the supply chain to exchange content with a gateway/portal that controls the access to the content dependent on role. The content exchanged needs to be both validated as well as synchronised. As content is added there is a need for an event driven process to be triggered. This will need to integrate with a number of transactions and processes in different organisations to support the business process. Therefore there is a need for transaction and services management as well as facilities to make interoperability between the diverse systems easier. To overcome disparities in data meaning, there is a need for a Master Data Management solution for the community and data that is shared between business partners. In order to manage the environment, provide business intelligence and support alerts around governance and compliance issues, the solution has to have a layer for management and reporting. This is what Business Community Management is all about. Does this sound too good to be true?

So how do Inovis tackle this? Inovis provide a suite of modular applications, all of which are built upon their Multienteprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform—this is designed on a distributed architecture around a J2EE clustered environment. The BCM suite comprises five key modules that support the BCM model I have described. Jefferies said, "The modular nature of BCM applications enable companies to add value incrementally, allowing quick adoption as business needs require and the ability to scale for future growth".

The Visibility module provides a "single pane of glass" view presented on a dashboard that enables the community to track and act upon the business intelligence in real time. The Transact module translates data from an array of protocols, standards and applications. The translation applications support VAN, Direct Connect, ebXML, Web Services, AS/1 (SMTP), AS/2 (HTTP/s) and AS/3 (FTP) and other network-based protocols and formats including EDI, EDI-INT, RosettaNet, and has specific adapters and support for enterprise integration to systems such as Oracle and SAP. The Collaboration module features out-of-the-box notification, events and alert capabilities. It allows the user to define the performance parameters and responses to meet specific community needs. The Communication module supports over 47 protocols and standards, including direct connect, AS1, AS2, AS3 and Value-Added Networks (VANs). The Optimize module is built around a centralised master data repository that standardises B2B documents, supply chain documents and catalogue items from the community. It features a tracking portal that provides visibility into every transaction in addition to tracking of data against pre-defined business rules. When errors are identified, transactions are quarantined and resolved before they can create downstream problems in the supply chain or other business process. These applications are provided as services run on the Inovisworks™ Value-Added Network hosted at Inovis's Tier Four Data Centre, which Inovis claim has 99.995% availability with automated failover. The service is supported by professional and educational services to enable the customer to make the most of the solutions provided.

So we have a new acronym—BCM—and a new outsource service from a well-known experienced provider of outsourced services. If you want to improve your supply chain and you have been nodding your head as I have described the scenario, you should certainly look seriously at Inovis's BCM solution.

Source: it-director.com/business

NetEdge Computing Solutions Pvt Ltd, a global provider of IT products and services, launches its online B2B portal, The Mall of India, aiming to offer manufacturers, buyers, sellers and suppliers a well structured, unique and manageable web presence.

THE MALL of India is a business to business (B2B) portal aimed at providing virtual platform to facilitate business interactions between the international and domestic community of buyers and sellers. The portal offers value added services catering to the business needs and demands of international buyers and sellers.

With The Mall of India portal, NetEdge plans to create an online trading platform to carry out business transactions smoothly, serving to the needs of the users and meeting their desired business goals and objectives. It aims to provide manufacturers, buyers, sellers and suppliers a well structured, unique and manageable web presence combined with the right mix of information, services and products to achieve success in B2B marketplace.

The Mall of India helps in promoting buyers and suppliers business by providing an ease to use platform to submit online trade enquiries, to search prospective customers for their business, buyer and seller databases, live online discussion forums to participate in issues like Exim, Taxation etc. In addition to this, it also provides a 24-hour help desk to cater to user problems, business information, industry trends and news etc. Membership packages allows users to showcase their products in the B2B Directories, Yellow Pages, Virtual Trade Fairs and Featured shops, thus generating leads and earn profits.

The Mall of India is currently available to customers across the globe.

For pricing or product information, please contact: sales@netedgecomputing.com or (0120) 242 3809 / 3810.

About NetEdge
NetEdge Computing Solutions Pvt Ltd has been offering innovative IT products and services, at accessible price points to clients across the globe since 1992. Its corporate umbrella supports five business initiatives; a product portfolio that features over six applications as well as a suite of IT services. NetEdge is headquartered in Noida, India, with offices in the UK, Thailand and USA.

For more information, please visit: http://www.netedgecomputing.com/

Website helps local suppliers enter retail stores across China

BEIJING, April 22 / -- eFuture Information Technology Inc. ("eFuture"), a leading front-end supply chain management software and service company in China and Beijing Wangku Hutong Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("Wangku"), one of China's leading retail business-to- business ("B2B") e-commerce service providers, today announced the launch of a 100-day public testing pilot of http://www.jindian.com.cn/ ("China Jindian"), a jointly-designed B2B website for small to medium-size suppliers and retailers.

"In Mandarin Chinese, 'Jindian' literally means 'enter the store,' which is exactly our goal," said Mr. Adam Yan, eFuture's chairman and chief executive officer. "Over 80 percent of local suppliers do business directly with local retailers. With China Jindian, we are leveraging our strong relationships with China's retail clients to help local suppliers enter retail stores across the country. This exciting development simplifies the supply chain and will also help our over 700 retail clients, which use over 500,000 suppliers and include many of China's top 100 retailers, expand their procurement sources, increase procurement efficiency and reduce procurement cost."

The China Jindian online platform provides a searchable database of subscriber-posted listings focusing on the retail and consumer goods industries. On the website, suppliers can post listings with product descriptions, contact information, location and in some cases videos showcasing the suppliers' factories. The postings are separated by category, brand and location and searchable by retailers, who can post requests for products and suppliers, store information and details about new store openings.

"Our leading position in e-commerce, team of over 100 partners, which have over 2,000 salespeople, and network of more than 200,000 member clients are an ideal complement to eFuture's supply chain management capabilities and relationships with China's top retailers," said Mr. Haibo Wang, Wangku's chief executive officer. "There are millions of small to medium-size retailers and suppliers in China that, while wanting to do business in the national retail market, simply don't have the medium to meet and exchange information with national retailers. China Jindian's user-friendly and reputable e-commerce platform ensures efficient communication and opens the door for future generations of retailers and suppliers in China to succeed."

About Wangku Hutong Information Technology Co., Ltd.

Wangku, through its http://www.99114.com.cn/ website, is a leading provider of B2B e-commerce service solutions focused on helping suppliers to utilize the Internet rather than traditional Industry Yellow Pages. 99114.com.cn is a B2B portal and procurement link connecting manufacturers, distributors, resellers and retailers. Wangku initiated its "Yi Wang Tong" service (a one- stop enterprise B2B e-commerce service package), which integrates the functions of accessing websites, promotion, interaction, authentication and transaction.

As one of the leading B2B e-commerce service enterprises in China, Wangku has received significant industry attention, and has been awarded one of China's "Top-100 Commercial Websites," "Top-100 Web 2.0 Websites" and "Top- 100 B2B e-Commerce Websites" for its success in the field of e-commerce.

For more information about Wangku, please visit http://www.99114.com.cn/ . About eFuture Information Technology Inc.
eFuture is a leading provider of front-end supply chain management software and services in China. eFuture provides one-stop-shop software and service solutions to manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, logistics companies and retailers in China's front-end supply chain market, especially in the retail and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (''FMCG'') industries. eFuture currently serves more than 900 clients, including Fortune 500 companies, over 700 retailers and over 200 distributors operating in China. eFuture is also one of IBM's premier business partners in Asia Pacific and is a strategic partner with Oracle, Microsoft, JDA, Motorola and Samsung Network China. The company has over 600 people and 20 branch offices across China.
For more information about eFuture, please visit http://www.e-future.com.cn/ .