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e-Marketplaces or
B2B Exchanges Exploding
Paul J. Gibler
The
business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce marketplace is
exploding with recent estimates from Forrester Research
that B2B e-commerce will reach $2.7 Trillion in 2004.
The Gartner Group is estimating that these
marketplaces will represent 37% of the overall B2B
market. Forester is estimating that they will account
for 45 – 77% of the e-commerce supply chain.
Both firms are attributing this rapid growth to
the development and deployment of e-marketplaces.
Business-to-business
e-marketplaces or exchanges are designed to bring
together buyer and sellers and to provide a meeting
place for news and information sharing. These are often referred to as the 3 C’s - Content,
Commerce and Community.
As these markets have evolved a fourth C
- connectivity is becoming increasingly important.
The early models that exchanges are following are
based on the following market types - auctions, catalog
aggregation, bid system and exchanges.
Markets
are starting to appear in almost all B2B categories.
Netmarketmakers,
a consultant focusing on this evolving business model
has identified over 450 vertical net markets.
If you haven’t seen them in your sector yet,
you soon will. Vertical sites include:
Agriculture -
Cattleinfonet,
DirectAg
Chemicals –
e-Chemicals, ChemConnect
Energy -
Altranet,
Enermetrix
Food
– GoFish, Fishmonger,
FoodUSA
Life Sciences
- Chemdex, Sciquest
Healthcare
– Neoforma, Medibuy
Metals –
Metalhunt, e-Steel
Paper -
PaperDeals, Paperexchange
Plastics –
PlasticsNet, Polymerland
Semiconductors -
Chipcenter, Partminer
One
of the largest players VerticalNet
started out as a community-based vertical website
developer. They
have since evolved their business model to provide fully
integrated marketplaces serving over 50 communities in
various industry sectors including healthcare, food,
environmental, manufacturing, process, communications
and advanced technology.
Key
players in the horizontal marketplace model are Ariba,
CommerceOne, SAP
and Oracle.
Vertical sites are beginning to develop
relationships with the horizontal players based on a
realization that large corporate customers will be
demanding that suppliers do business on their
marketplaces and that these players are best positioned
to meet this demand.
E-marketplaces are taking off for several reasons
including:
- Identification and matching of new buyers and
sellers
- Acceleration of transaction times
- Reduction of procurement costs (sourcing,
ordering, transaction, inventory, delivery)
- Integration with backend supply chain
- Community building opportunities
- Customer
demands
Re-printed
from the summer 2000 Madison Ad Fed Newsletter Re-published
at B2BMarketer.org.
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