PlanetPastel.com, a member of JSE-listed Softline, and ProcureTrade, a joint venture between the AST Group and McCarthy Online, are to integrate their business-to-business (B2B) trading hubs. The integration is expected to be complete by the first week of 2001.
Stakeholders claim the agreement is the first of its kind in SA, and will facilitate trade between the large enterprises using the ProcureTrade hub and the small to medium enterprises (SMEs) that maintain electronic storefronts and catalogues on PlanetPastel.com.
Dennis McCarthy, MD of ProcureTrade, believes the link into the PlanetPastel.com customer base will help the larger enterprises using ProcureTrade - which include the likes of McCarthy Motor Holdings, Iscor, AST Group and Engen - to develop relationships with SME and black-owned suppliers.
Mike Bryer, operations director of the Pastel Group, comments: "This [partnership] has been a vision of both PlanetPastel.com and ProcureTrade for a while; there is great synergy between our hubs."
Bryer says this agreement gives catalogues from its customers visibility on a trading hub used by some of SA`s largest companies.
"In the next phase of the project, we will look to link, through ProcureTrade, into Infobank trading hubs around the world, giving our users exposure to a global pool of potential customers and suppliers," he adds.
The companies will share the costs of integrating their trading platforms, both of which are built on Microsoft technology. Bryer says Microsoft, a primary driver in the BizTalk industry initiative, is in the process of investigating the feasibility of using XML to facilitate data integration between the hubs.
"We`re hoping to use the technology, but it`s still up to the technical decision-takers to decide on whether it will work."
Bryer predicts the trend of rival and complementary exchanges working together is likely to accelerate in the near future.
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