Connect your e-commerce body

-- Industrial Distribution, 1/1/2001

Steve Pillow, manager of supplier sales at MRO.com, provides this analogy to suggest how distributors might satisfy the different types of demand to conduct business electronically.

On one hand, firms should interface with e-procurement engines like Ariba, Commerce One or PSDI's MAXIMO EE, which large end users adopt to do transactions from their enterprise business systems. On the other hand, firms should accept orders from portals and exchanges, which may bundle buyers together or be mandated by large industries.

Your Web site and catalog is your online identity and another way for customers to reach you.

Your torso is your e-commerce hub. It should provide interoperability to take online orders from any of the three sources of demand-without requiring you to create specific solutions and catalogs for each customer who wants to buy online from you. One electronic catalog and one connection to your back-end business system should be all that is required. Your e-commerce hub should provide all of the functionality needed to facilitate this kind of connectivity.

Source: Steve Pillow, MRO.com