The Future of Electronic Commerce

Hector Baraona,
CIO/SVP Technology,
Grupo Acceso, Inc.

E-Commerce is undergoing a revolution as Internet and Web-based technologies dramatically change and simplify the computing architectures within and between companies. The question remains however, of where and how this new computing models will truly benefit not just the enterprise, but rather small and medium sized companies as well. I believe that this revolution, has already started and has  impacted many types of software applications and development efforts, much of the work has already been done, pioneered  by the larger enterprise or those more fortunate and daring having been able to take advantage of tremendous cash insertions of venture capital in the past few years.

Many of these systems were built to withstand exponential traffic growth with even larger transactional backend capabilities, features which have yet to meet their design limitations.  While we wait for the new economy to reach footing and reach critical mass, we must  leverage the opportunity to  use these existing platforms, systems and processes to deploy  quick, reasonably inexpensive "Rational Experimentation Projects" to see and understand exactly how digitizable your products and services are.

Businesses will communicate, interact and transact with each other as never before. Companies within trading communities will operate as if they are each other's internal departments. The future of electronic commerce will be interactive, dynamic and real-time - within the enterprise and between enterprises. And I believe that companies need not wait any longer to capitalize on the electronic commerce of the future. These solutions can be delivered today.

Companies now have an opportunity to revolutionize both how they procure goods and how they transact and interact with their trading community. This is a vision not only of revolutionizing procurement within the four walls of an enterprise, but also extending the solution beyond the enterprise, to interact electronically with suppliers, customers, and distributors. In short, it is a vision of completely integrated, end-to-end electronic commerce solutions, that tie corporate intranets and extranets together. The age of the integrated supply chain - delivering benefits for buying and supplying organizations - is here.

Within the enterprise, electronic buying and requisitioning solutions constitute the first "killer app" for the intranet. Electronic procurement solutions support a new desktop requisitioning model made possible by multi-supplier electronic catalogs for product selection and sourcing, workflow engines for business rule support and routing, and automated order creation and transmission. The results are impressive - processes are streamlined, rogue purchasing is reduced, cycle times are shortened, productivity is increased, and - critically - corporate spend is tracked, leveraged and lowered.

However, while electronic requisitioning is a key piece of any electronic procurement solution, it is still only a piece. Truly exploiting the Internet and real-time technologies, complete electronic procurement solutions not only offer killer apps for the intranet, but also killer apps for the extranet. Extranet applications that link the enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems of buyers and suppliers, and manage the information exchange and transactions among trading partners, can benefit the entire trading community.

Commerce communications between companies are transformed. Routine and repetitive tasks, like checking prices and product availability, that are usually handled by people - your most expensive resource - can be completely automated. Using an extranet electronic procurement solution, buyers can check product availability, pricing and order status, while also processing and reconciling orders on-line, all in real-time. The impact on the enterprise is impressive: more accurate and simplified processes that improve inventory management, enable comparative supplier practices, and improve supplier management - saving the enterprise millions of dollars, above and beyond intranet-only solutions. Equally compelling are the benefits suppliers reap from engaging in electronic commerce extranet solutions as well. The resources required in sales, customer service and fulfillment are dramatically reduced with the automation of product selection, ordering, order entry, customer service, tracking, and reconciliation.

The technologies required to fulfill this vision of integrated intranet and extranet electronic commerce solutions for the enterprise are clear: powerful procurement and transaction applications on scaleable, secure, standardized platforms, which together must easily integrate with ERP systems and the rest of the enterprise. The vision of integrated supply chains - with integrated businesses and integrated solutions - that deliver dynamic real-time commerce that will forever change the way companies conduct business within, and beyond, the four walls of the enterprise