Business-to-Business demystified:

In the business-to-business e-commerce model, suppliers develop standard, low-cost channels to sell to corporate customers. For example, consider a Fortune 500 company that wants to allow its employees to buy sundry items such as office supplies online. It can set up an open purchase order with an office supplier and allow employees to access the supplier's Internet site to make purchases.

It is somewhat challenging to derive profit from a business-to-business model. The chief reason for this is because corporate customers expect quantity discounts. Additionally, the merchants involved expect delivery and/or payment within certain time frames. Another name for this type of business-to-business commerce is inter-company commerce. This model is characterized by high volume and low price margins. A related practice is providing transactions between divisions in your company. Larger corporations use Intranets to help conduct high-volume transactions. Such intra-company commerce transactions may also include stricter delivery, billing, and processing guidelines for these transactions.

Business-to-business transactions often use supply chain management, which is the virtual integration of partners on the supply and process chains. E-commerce provides the advantages of timely communication and automatic processing.

As you have seen, intra-company communication requires an Intranet, which is basically an internal network that uses Internet-related technology. An Intranet offers several benefits. Among them are training support, an enhanced sense of community or corporate culture, reduced costs for such things as employee handbooks and policy manuals, software distribution, and knowledge sharing.

Similar to Intranets, extranets provide for limited sharing of a company's information with selected partners outside the company. Such partners could include customers, suppliers, regulators, industry organization colleagues, and universities.

WebWork-Solutions provides the best in e-business consultancy and implementation services. Contact us by clicking here to learn more on how WebWork-Solutions can help propel your business in the new economy.