Cisco is now building near real-time connections to 250 supplier companies. This will have a major implication for inventory management. If Cisco can get its system right, others will follow. Intel will be following in a close second,' he said. One reason to watch large firms such as Cisco is to examine how they go about putting the many parts of the B2B jigsaw together.
Firms face innumerable decisions about how to conduct online business with other firms.
The options include joining a large public marketplace for a particular industry, such as Covisint in car manufacturing, or building a private network linked to other firms in a supply chain. Phillips said that the important thing is to increase communication between the companies involved in B2B transactions. Firms building B2B systems will also have to get to grips with EU legislation. I think so. Quite frankly the jury is out on that issue because there is so little activity on these larger exchanges at the moment,' he said.