B2B Web Sites

by Dan Blacharski

January 22, 2002 —

I can't think of any nostalgic stories about the old days to open up
today's newsletter, so I'll jump right into the meat of it for a
change. A B2B e-commerce strategy will very likely revolve around Web
technology and communication. The Web is what forms the foundation of
B2B e-commerce, and facilitates the new level of cooperation that
exists between business partners. Your strategy is likely to involve a
very close level of integration between you and your business partners;
integration that will allow multiple business partners to create a sort
of "business Web," where you may be able to get into each others'
networks and access each others' databases. You're creating a whole new
value chain, where information from one partner may drive a process for
another partner; and direct access to that information is what makes it
happen quickly and automatically.

A B2B Web site is really the center of your business operation. Think
of it as a central office, where everyone meets to do business. Think
of it as a huge central repository, where all the business information
anybody will ever need can be accessed. I think of it like my wife's
handbag, which is the center of our household operations. There's the
equivalent of a Manufacturing Division in there (her granny's recipe
for chicken 'n dumplings), Creative Department (makeup), and Operations
(three months worth of to-do lists). If I need a receipt from office
supplies I bought last January, chances are she's got it in there.

The main components of a real B2B site are:

* Information -- The Web site can act as a central clearing house
for all sorts of information that your partners, resellers,
customers, branch offices and remote workers may need to access
from time to time. Besides information about your products that
you may display on your Web site in static form, you may also use
the Web site as a place to present dynamic information--
information that constantly changes. This is where the next
category, integration, comes in.
* Integration -- If you have information on your network that you
want to distribute to various partners, you could send it to the
copy shop and mail it to them. And when something changes, you
can mail them an update. Or, you could integrate the entire
database of information with your Web site, so that when your
partner wants to look up some information, they just have to go
to your Web site, enter in the information they need, and a
simple lookup application will travel across the Internet into
your internal network, verify that they have permission to
receive that information, retrieve the data from your database,
and then send it back across the Internet and create a custom Web
page to display it to that individual.
* Applications -- The Web is being used more for application
delivery, especially in a B2B environment. It's likely that
you'll have business partners that you'll want to give certain
applications to. These applications may be product configurators,
database applications for looking up information, or other small
applications designed to make doing business with you a little
easier.
* Connectivity -- Of course, the Web is a tool that connects
everyone in the "business web." Virtual private networks and
extranets are quickly replacing older means of communication,
such as telephone, fax, and mail.

Information is what drives commerce, and if you're going to do business
electronically, you have to make information readily accessible.
There's a delicate balancing act that you must undertake, which on one
hand protects your proprietary information with various safeguards such
as authorization, authentication, encryption and access controls; but
on the other hand, you don't want to make that information so difficult
to get to that your partners will give up in frustration and go
somewhere else.

But how do you get the information from all the little silos of
information, and all the various databases that exist within your
internal network, out to your partners in other parts of the world?
That data has to get from your databases out to the Internet for that
to happen, and that usually means that an application has to exist on
your Web server, which allows your partner to request information. That
request is made through a software application, which communicates to
the Web server, and then passes the request back through to your
internal network, where the information is retrieved, sent back out to
the Web server, across the Internet and out to the partner. Most common
database management systems, such as Filemaker Pro, Access, and Paradox
have web-enabling functions built in, which allow you to transform your
data into HTML content and publish it to the Web. A more dynamic
approach is to use a Web catalog products like Selectica's ACE Product
Suite can automate the process of taking a request over a Web site,
checking an Oracle database on the back end for information, and then
returning it to the browser on the other side.

Another category of product called configurators go even further,
connecting your database with manufacturing and inventory systems,
letting you fine-tune your manufacturing process to produce only those
products that have been sold ("just-in-time" manufacturing), and to
modify the manufacturing process based on each customer request.

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