Besides intranet and extranet benefits, the Fruit alliance is starting to realize other benefits, especially from the data that is captured from all of the customers' inquiries into the web server. It turns out that web server statistics software has become an overnight industry offering new supply channel opportunities. The Fruit extranet may start an irreversible reorganization of the channel from the end-users back to the manufacturer. Information technology will dramatically reduce the cycle time, inventory, paper, people and errors per dollar of sales for participating distributors. Competitive manufacturers and distributors will have to imitate and improve on Fruit's initiative or die.
Conclusions Creating a low-cost web catalog today is the tip of an iceberg.
The big payoffs from web technology will be from alliance - intranets, extranets and international web sales fulfillment capabilities. Both existing and potential alliance groups should immediately start investigating the feasibility and the lower costs, higher benefits of mass producing web sites. For starters, some solution providers with distribution channel experience have been cited in the footnotes. In this case, we will use the term for when members of an alliance use it to find and buy goods from one another. FedEx's system is a commonly cited example.