CommerceQuest (UK) Ltd., a premier provider of business-to-business (B2B) integration solutions, has announced the availability in South Africa of enableNet, an end-to-end managed integration service.
The enableNet service, which last week won the top award in the e-Commerce category at IBM`s annual Solution Excellence Awards, is targeted at e-Marketplaces operated by Net Market Makers and industry consortia and at large corporations conducting B2B e-Commerce. The externally managed integration service enables B2B e-Commerce ventures to easily and inexpensively offer a method for exchanging high volume trading information automatically and securely - enabling rapid scalability.
"All indications are that Southern Africa will be a major growth region for e-Marketplaces," said Geoff Hardwick, managing director of CommerceQuest in Johannesburg. "But B2B e-Commerce ventures and their participants really must ask the question of whether their solution will scale up to accommodate high volume transactions securely."
enableNet is an end-to-end managed service that allows seamless integration and information transfer among members of a given B2B exchange. It provides users any-to-any integration - any data shared across any application, hardware or network - with assured delivery within a dependable and secure operating environment. The integration of trading information is a requirement for efficient, high volume trading - across trading community systems of order fulfilment processes, supply chain management, logistics, invoicing and reconciliation and other processes.
"The art to beating competing B2B e-Commerce ventures is to create strong value-add and create `stickiness.` CommerceQuest enables this to be achieved easily and quickly by outsourcing the integration requirement through enableNet," said Hardwick.
E-Markets adopting enableNet will become the more attractive of competing marketplaces. They will gain brand loyalty, says CommerceQuest because buyers and sellers will appreciate the ease by which they can scale up to high volume trading by simply outsourcing the integration of their trading community. For B2B markets, this competitive advantage, combined with the volume of trading enabled, presents opportunity for market segment leadership, rapid liquidity, greater profitability and faster, more secure returns.
e-Chemicals, a US-based CommerceQuest customer, described their product experience. "CommerceQuest`s outsourced B2B integration service is a good solution for companies who need to integrate e-procurement solutions and their existing internal systems with their trading partners," said Eric Hughey, e-Chemicals chief operating officer. "Our supply chain solution provides chemical industry trading partners with greater transaction efficiency and supply chain optimisation in the buy, transform and sell processes."
CommerceQuest launched its enableNet service in North America in January 2000 and e-Chemicals is just one of a number of leading companies to have already adopted the service. New customers include Commerx, EmployeeLife, ICG Commerce, CourtLink and SourceTrack. CommerceQuest believes European clients will soon follow. On 3rd July this year, the company acquired British e-Business and IT consultancy CITL, giving a European-based centre of expertise of some 60 experienced B2B integration staff for delivery and management of the enableNet service on this side of the Atlantic.
Industry analysts, including Gartner Group, have noted a high growth potential in the B2B market. Statistics suggest that B2B revenue in Europe in 1999 totalled $31.8 billion. In 2004, the European B2B market is expected be more than $2.34 trillion.
Share
