This month BHP chief Paul Anderson told a business forum in Canberra about mining Internet sites in Japan and the United States that enabled anybody to buy and sell billions of dollars' worth of coal and iron ore. I don't know who they are,'' he said. Maybe they operate from a garage. Clearly, yesterday's rules no longer apply. First, there is access to more, and new, consumers.
Any business can be a global enterprise, simply by setting up a website.
For a tiny outlay compared to the cost of building stores and hiring staff, a company has access to a potentially vast market. One of the best examples of B2B at work is at the American supermarket chain Wal-Mart. Information technology has enabled Wal-Mart to become the world's largest retailer. The company's founder, Sam Walton, threw out the old technologies of paper, invoices and cheques to give his suppliers direct access, via the Internet, to Wal-Mart's shelves and accounting systems. Take a Wal-Mart supplier such as Kelloggs.