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Ambassador of Nepal Ambassador of Pakistan Ambassador of Sri Lanka
History Made Easy South Asian Memories
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the-south-asian.com December 2000 |
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Business – to – Business [ B2B] - Software Applications by Salman Saeed The Internet spawns the possibilities of a new wave of business
automation with significant cost savings and efficiencies. This "killer
application" is of the scale that Peter Drucker [ the management guru ]
mentions societies adopting when a productivity gain of 10 times is
possible. The " Killer Application" combines Business -to- Business [
B2B] economies of scale in a combination of the following business
functions automation - Electronic Sales & Procurement of supplies
for a Business. The functions that are automated are Order Placement,
Shipping, Credit History, Online Billing, Settlement, and Collections.
XML is used to transfer information in the forms for each of the
functions from the buyer to the sellers accounting & information
systems. The large Fortune 200 are in the first wave of such automation and
industry leaders [Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Texas Instruments, Cisco, AMD,
Dell, etc] have already adopted the automation and the subsequent
benefits from putting electronic catalogs of their sales and their
supplies. According to Forrester Research by mid- 2000 only 250
companies had Electronic - Procurement systems in place. About 85 % of
US Companies have no E-Procurement systems in place. Oracle has
reportedly saved about $ 2 billion, CISCO and Dell also report
phenomenal numbers of increased sales and savings. In the second phase U.S. Military Forces, Government department [ General
Services & Administration -GSA, and the small to medium sized businesses
will adopt Electronic Procurement systems. Hotel/ Hospitality Industry – The hotel/motel industry is
procurement heavy. The average cost of soap, toiletries, in-room coffee,
mints, is $15-20. There are 4 million hotel /motel rooms in the U.S.A.
The cost savings in automating this e-procurement are substantial. VISA – implemented an ARIBA " Strategic Hub for
Operational Processes and Purchasing" or SHOPP – an automated
purchasing system & process. About 2000 employees from VISA use this
Online catalog [ with system controls and spending limits defined for
each employee ]. The benefits were as follows : Purchase Order [P.O.] got out in 30 minutes. [ 3 days in the manual
system ] Cost of P.O. processing was reduced from $ 100 to $ 30. Time to request & receive was shortened from 7 days to 2 days. British Telecom reported 90% reduction in administrative cost
after an E-Procurement solution was implemented using "Commerce
One" software. BSNF railroad [ Burlington Nortern Santa Fe Corporation with
Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas has a total revenue of $ 9 billion and
expenses of $ 5 billion. It has 45,000 employees, 5,000 locomotives, and
90,000 freight cars. The existing purchasing system "
Millennium" is an EDI based Dun & Bradstreet software. After
due diligence BSNF selected "Clarus Corporation" open
architecture. The return on investment is reportedly in the 3-digit
range. Other Users: Some well known names of Companies providing B2B [ especially supply
chain management ] solutions are Commerce One, Ariba, I2, IBM, Web
Methods, "H.SUPPLY.COM", "WORKS.COM". For
electronic Billing in the banking industry "Derivion"
which processes annually some 200 million bills including Mastercard and
First Union bills, is used by ABN Amro Bank for its bill
processing and settlement automation. Citibank has started using "Web Methods" which is an
industry leader in B2B solutions. Web Methods is the industry leader with clients such as Cisco, Sun
Microsystems, Siemens, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, Compaq, Dell, HSBC,
Fidelity Investments, ABN Amro, Boeing, Oracle, Ericsson, Cable &
Wireless, Ascend, US Air Force, Army, DOD, US GSA, US DOT, etc. "Billing Zone" is another industry leading product
currently in use at ABN Amro. The facility for electronic signatures which are legal has also come
into force in the U.S. through a federal E-SIGN act effective Oct1,
2000. Some web sites for Buyer/Seller transactions in Electronics are < < www.Avnet.com > - largest distributor of semiconductors. < www.fastparts.com> - first B2B [ 1991] net market place for buyers, sellers. If you type the country name and B2B into the Alta vista search engine, an impressive number of sites are returned in the case of India. Some of the sites that appear promising are
South Asia – the B2B market Gap & Opportunity. There were no Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bangladesh B2B sites in the AltaVista search engine. This reflects an untapped market niche for entrepreneurs wishing to invest and develop trade and business in such a promising area. For the South Asian countries the respective areas that are of immediate benefit would be for their export industries to be put on web sites. Software packages such as Interwoven or Documentum can be used to manage content. Industry Catalogs and marketing brochures and automated Email can be rapidly developed. The countries light and heavy industries, textile, knitwear, sports goods, crafts, agricultural commodities such as rice, tea, etc can be increased in their trade export volumes tremendously. ________________ |
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