If you were to survey CIOs at Global 2000 companies about their 10 most important IT applications, I can almost guarantee you that B2B e-commerce wouldn’t make their list.  In fact, many of the CIOs would even go so far as to tell you that they shouldn’t have to pay for these technologies any more.  But I find this to be a very naive view – especially when you step back and look at the bigger picture of how industries are restructuring in today’s economy.   Companies are becoming more and more specialized, outsourcing more and more business functions to third parties.  This transformation is occurring in every industry and every business process.  In the supply chain, retailers and OEMs are outsourcing functions such as design, development, manufacturing, logistics, sales and service to third parties.  As business process outsourcing becomes more popular we are seeing more finance, IT and HR disciplines being transitioned to third party specialists.  This is significant because it means that companies are more dependent than ever on business partners!  Consequently, enterprise systems are more dependent upon external applications to get the data they need to function.  My own qualitative analysis suggests that over 50% of corporate data now originates outside the enterprise.  That means if you cannot connect to your business partners, your IT systems won’t function properly and you cannot run your business.  Does that sound like an area to under-invest in?  Yet, unfortunately, most enterprises don’t take such a strategic view towards B2B e-commerce. 

In this blog I will explore the continually evolving role of B2B e-commerce technology plays in supporting the needs of industry.  I have responsibility for the vertical industry strategy at GXS, which means that my team monitors the trends in sectors like automotive, retail, high tech, pharmaceuticals, logistics, banking and insurance.  Being a global company, one of our challenges is trying to understand the differences and similarities across different regions of the world such as Europe, Asia, North and South America.  There is a lot of fascinating activity occurring in the B2B segment today.  Whole new communities of users in emerging markets such as China, India and Eastern Europe are just starting to use B2B.  In mature markets such as the US, Western Europe and Japan, corporations are using B2B not just as an instrument to cut costs, but as a growth enabler.  Every day I see examples of how customers are utilizing B2B technologies to accelerate time to market for new products and to differentiate their offerings by becoming easier to do business. I refer to this collective set of activities by which B2B is helping to improve business performance as “EDInomics.”  In this blog, I will share my insights on EDInomics — the primary goal being to challenge many of the current misconceptions that outsiders and, unfortunately, many insiders have about B2B, EDI and the related vendors.  I think you will find that B2B is a highly underrated technology, that isn’t on the decline, but, in fact, has yet to peak…

Steve Keifer 

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