B2B e-commerce in Depth

B2B e-commerce is simply defined as e-commerce between companies. This is the
type of e-commerce that deals with relationships between and among businesses.About 80% of e-commerce is of this type, and most experts predict that B2B ecommerce will continue to grow faster than the B2C segment.

The B2B market has two primary components: e-frastructure and e-markets. Efrastructure
is the architecture of B2B, primarily consisting of the following:

● logistics - transportation, warehousing and distribution (e.g., Procter and Gamble);
● application service providers - deployment, hosting and management of packaged
software from a central facility (e.g., Oracle and Linkshare);
● outsourcing of functions in the process of e-commerce, such as Web-hosting,
security and customer care solutions (e.g., outsourcing providers such as
eShare, NetSales, iXL Enterprises and Universal Access);
● auction solutions software for the operation and maintenance of real-time auctions
in the Internet (e.g., Moai Technologies and OpenSite Technologies);
● content management software for the facilitation of Web site content management
and delivery (e.g., Interwoven and ProcureNet); and
● Web-based commerce enablers (e.g., Commerce One, a browser-based, XMLenabled
purchasing automation software).

E-markets are simply defined as Web sites where buyers and sellers interact with
each other and conduct transactions.

The more common B2B examples and best practice models are IBM, Hewlett Packard (HP), Cisco and Dell. Cisco, for instance, receives over 90% of its product orders over the Internet.

Most B2B applications are in the areas of supplier management (especially purchase
order processing), inventory management (i.e., managing order-ship-billcycles), distribution management (especially in the transmission of shipping documents),channel management (i.e., information dissemination on changes in operational conditions), and payment management (e.g., electronic payment systems or EPS)