Management Considerations for B2B Online Exchanges

Information and communication technology (ICT) is applied to support the creation of electronic markets (e-markets). Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the exchange of structured data between information systems of different organizations. EDI is often considered as the first step towards e-markets. In the course of time EDI was extended and interorganizational information systems (IOS) were used to create electronic marketplaces. IOS serve as intermediaries between buyers and sellers. Probably the most well known examples of IOSs are airline reservation systems, which are closed systems having typically a limited number of participants.

:This paper examines the relationship between process reengineering and channel performance for firms implementing electronic data interchange (EDI) ordering within the U.S. grocery industry. Both quantitative and qualitative data sources are combined to demonstrate that channel transformation (interorganizational reengineering) involving both technological innovation (EDI) and redesign of replenishment processes enables performance improvements more than an order of magnitude greater than implementation of EDI ordering alone. New replenishment processes, enabled by EDI, provide retailers with 50–100 percent higher inventory turns for products using continuous replenishment processes (CRP) relative to retailer performance using traditional ordering processes. Firms adopting EDI for ordering without reengineering ordering processes have failed to realize statistically significant improvements in inventory levels or stockouts. This demonstrates the potential for extending the business process reengineering concept to include the entire supply chain.

The use of Internet and Web technologies between organizations has gained much attention in recent years. Termed business-to-business (B2B) electronic commerce, the linking and integration of inter-organizational business processes and systems promises cost and time savings, as well as new business opportunities. The many examples of B2B applications cover a broad range of sales and purchasing processes, business models, industries, and products and services. Complexity ranges from simple message switchboards to sophisticated marketplaces handling a multitude of real-time transactions, integrated closely with the backend systems of the participants. Using information technology (IT) to connect organizations is by no means a new phenomenon, but reaches back several decades to include electronic data interchange (EDI) systems and remote terminal applications. Still, systems based on Internet standards seem to be easier to set up technically and cheaper to interconnect. They might thus reach wider adoption and acceptance than many of the earlier initiatives, and as a result give smaller players a realistic opportunity to join in and reap benefits similar to their larger partners.

To compete effectively in today’s global marketplace,a company must have a competitive supply chain. A competitive supply chain requires an ability to communicate rapidly and accurately. Electronic Data Interchange(EDI) is one method that world class organizations have successfully used to improve the communication of orders and design changes. However, the growth in use of EDI has been much slower than projected. This article discusses the results of a survey to identify some of the barriers to the use of EDI and some possible methods to overcome those barriers. The results of this study show that organizational resistance to change is lower for EDI users than for non users. The results further indicate that awareness of technical issues is higher for EDI users. Suggestions regarding how to help overcome the barriers to using high technology innovations such as EDI are provided.

The objective of this work is to analyse the importance of firms’ previous experience with different information technologies (Internet, electronic data interchange (EDI)) in their implementation of e-Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) and B2B. Moreover, we also study the role of e-CRM in B2B development. The results show that experience with systems such as EDI or Internet has a direct influence on the use of e-CRM. There is also a direct and positive transmission of knowledge from e-CRM to B2B, though the former has not been adopted intensively by firms yet. Companies should be aware of the interrelations that exist between the different information technologies. The knowledge accumulated from using a technological innovation can be considered an important aspect of organisational knowledge, which allows firms to obtain a number of benefits as a result of applying systems that are complementary.

To compare the concentration of serum alpha-tocopherol during the postpartum period in women admitted to public and private hospitals in Natal (RN), Brazil. The study included 209 women in the postpartum period, 96 of them from private hospitals and 113 from public hospitals, studied between 24 and 48 hours postpartum. Inclusion criteria were: mothers aged 12 years or more, without diseases associated with pregnancy, who had given birth to a singleton with no malformations. Clinically decompensated women with multiple fetuses were excluded. A 5 mL blood sample was obtained from each participant under fasting conditions, before the first meal of the day. The concentration of alpha-tocopherol in serum (µg/dL) was determined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The statistical difference between means was tested by the Student's t-test. The mean concentration of alpha-tocopherol was 1.115.7 µg/dL in puerperae from the public network and 1.355.7 ± 397.6 µg/dL in puerperae from the private network , with a significant difference between groups (p=0.000687). Vitamin E concentration was determined individually and an alpha-tocopherol level <11.6 µmol/L or <499.6 µg/dL was considered to indicate deficiency. Vitamin E deficiency was detected in 5.3% of puerperae from the public network (n=6), whereas no deficiency was detected among women from the private network. However, low concentrations of alpha-tocopherol (11.6 to 16.2 µmol/L or 499.6 to 697.7 µg/dL) was detected in both groups, i.e., in 9.7% of the women from the public network (n=11) and in 4.2% for the women from the private network (n=4). These results highlight that women assisted in the public sector were more vulnerable to developing low concentrations of alpha-tocopherol than women assisted in the private sector.

Chapter 5 - Electronic Data Interchange

Different initiatives have been developed with the purpose ofstandardising the automation of business transactions through the Internet(referred to as B2B or business to business). These initiatives aim to designcommon processes and tools to make possible the global collaboration oforganisations in the Internet. But these initiatives do not require just tostandardise aspects related to physical communications protocols. Theirobjectives also include the standardisation of the electronic documents thatare exchanged in the execution of business processes like supply, distribution, invoicing, etc. Usually the term «framework» is used to refer to theseapproaches, to cover all the aspects related to business transactionstandardisation. Electronic documents support business transactions, andtheir structure, contents and integration in automated work processes hasalways been one of the areas subject of study and analysis. This contributiondescribe the evolution of e-collaboration frameworks and compares thefeatures previous initiatives like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) withframeworks specifically designed with the Internet in mind like ebXML,RosettaNet or UBL (Universal Business Language).

E-business means an electronic business transaction among business entities using computer system, network and other resources. Interoperability is one of important characteristics at e-business, because it needs to cover heterogeneousness between different platforms or commerce environments. Business process (BP) which is one of e-business category, is a modeling technology to business transactions that are able to integrate transaction processing. It makes a scenario after modeling to business process. With the scenario, it may accomplish B2B transaction automatically. So, it is able to cope with a change as reusability is expanding from document-level to scenario-level. Also, it is possible to support business collaboration between trading partners (companies). To do modeling, in this paper, we use UN/CEFACT (United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) UMM (UN/CEFACT modeling methodology) as methodology and work with 4 view of open-EDI (electronic data interchange) BOV (business operational view). An aim of BP modeling is to make transaction scenarios through BP modeling and to execute automatically B2B transaction via the scenarios. In the early commerce stage, the standardization of business document was important matter more than anything else. We extend reusability-level to business scenario and are able to dynamically cope with changes. In this paper, we consider logistics part as target business domain and do business modeling using worksheet and UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagram of UMM. The modeled scenario is managed as XML (extensible Markup Language) based on BPSS (business process specification schema). Also, it is able to integrate with implement infra, such as messaging service, repository, etc.

Electronic data interchange in an industrial sector: The case of The Netherlands' building industry

The growing popularity of the Internet has taken many organisations by surprise. Established mechanisms such as fax technology, electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic messaging, and file transfers over private networks have dominated electronic commerce until now. The advantages of the Internet are changing that technological landscape very rapidly. Those advantages include: a) Worldwide connectivity. b) Hardware and software independence provided by ubiquitous Web browsers. c) User friendliness. d)Interactive nature of Web-aware technologies. e) Affordable technology.

An increasing amount of research focuses on integrating the Internet of Things and blockchain technology to address the requirements of traceability applications for Industry 4.0. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of several aspects of these new blockchain-based traceability systems. For instance, very few works have studied blockchain’s impact on the resources of constrained IoT sensors. Similarly, the infrastructure costs of these blockchain-based systems are not widely understood. This paper characterizes the resources of low-cost IoT sensors and provides a monetary cost model for blockchain infrastructure to support blockchain-based traceability systems. First, we describe and implement a farm-to-fork case study using public and private blockchain networks. Then, we analyze the impact of blockchain in six different resource-limited IoT devices in terms of disk and memory footprint, processing time, and energy consumption. Next, we present an infrastructure cost model and use it to identify the costs for the public and private networks. Finally, we evaluate the traceability of a product in different scenarios. Our results showed that low-cost sensors could directly interact with both types of blockchains with minimal energy overhead. Furthermore, our cost model showed that setting a private blockchain infrastructure costs approximately the same as that managing 50 products on a public blockchain network.

Many office systems are based on various types of messages, forms, or other documents. When users of such systems need to communicate with people who use different document types, some kind of translation is necessary. In this paper, we explore the space of general solutions to this translation problem and propose several specific solutions to it. After first illustrating the problem in the Information Lens electronic messaging system, we identify two partly conflicting objectives that any translation scheme should satisfy: preservation of meaning and autonomous evolution of group languages. Then we partition the space of possible solutions to this problem in terms of the set theoretic relations between group languages and a common language. This leads to four primary solution classes and we illustrate and evaluate each one. Finally, we describe a composite scheme that combines many of the best features of the other schemes. Even though our examples deal primarily with extensions to the Information Lens system, the analysis also suggests how other kinds of office systems might exploit specialization hierarchies of document types to simplify the translation problem. Computer-based office systems often use various types of messages, forms, and other documents to communicate information. When all the people who wish to communicate with each other use exactly the same types of documents, translation problems do not arise. However, when people want to communicate with others who use different kinds of documents, some kind of translation is necessary. The needs for such translation seem likely to become increasingly common as more and more diverse kinds of systems are linked into heterogeneous networks. We have been particularly concerned with one instance of this problem that arises in the context of template-based communication systems (e.g. [Malone et.al.87b], [Tsichritzis 82]). The problem is how users of such systems can communicate with other users who have a different set of templates. Other examples of the problem may arise when users of different word processing systems wish to exchange documents, or when different companies wish to use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards to exchange business forms such as purchase orders and invoices. In this paper, we will explore the space of general solutions to this translation problem and propose several specific schemes for solving it. Our primary goal has been to design extensions to the Information Lens system ([Malone et. al. 87a], [Malone et. al. 87b]) that allow different groups to communicate with each other when (1) the groups use some, but not all, of the same types of messages, and (2) the message types used by each group may change over time. In the first section of the paper, we illustrate the problem as it arises in the context of the Information Lens system. In the second section, we state the problem more precisely in terms of the objectives that we want its solution to satisfy. In Section 3, we explore the space of possible solutions by suggesting a dimension along which to partition the space and examining a representative solution for each class. In Section 4, we propose a new scheme that combines most of the desirable features of the solutions we explored. Finally, we conclude by hinting at the implications that this research might have for more general contexts.

How can we increase our efficiency, reduce expenses, do the job better, and offer greater value to our customer? These are the perennial questions that success-oriented enterprises ask of themselves. Commercial and non-commercial ventures, alike, are always looking for ways to increase productivity, reduce costs, provide increased added-value, and become more competitive and efficient.

Public networks offer a variety of choices for business networking needs. This chapter describes how private networks composed of leased lines are different from public networks. The chapter also describes the structure of public networks, including the structure of the public switched telephone system and the common technologies used in public networks. Advantages of using public networks over a private network of leased lines include value‐added services, lower cost for a given performance, and the removal of the requirement of maintaining in‐house expertise for network maintenance and support, planning, and disaster recovery. Disadvantages include potential variation in performance due to congestion on the public network and lack of control over day‐to‐day operations, upgrades, and long‐range planning for capacity changes. The chapter concludes with a description of the use of public networks in the Internet and E‐commerce environments.