Business Networking — Summary and Outlook

This book has described Business Networking as one of the seven trends companies have to address in order to remain competitive (cf. Chap. 2.3). Its relevance is growing and many brick-and-mortar companies are investing substantially in Business Networking (or eBusiness) projects. Estabhshed companies, such as Bayer, Deutsche Post, DaimlerChrysler or Deutsche Telekom are being transformed: new organizational units are being formed for eBusiness, traditional channels for procurement, marketing and sales redesigned, and new ‘eCompanies’ (co-) founded (e.g. Covisint by DaimlerChrysler, CheMatch by Bayer or emaro by Deutsche Bank and SAP. The goals behind these developments are twofold: Increased process efficiencies. Business Networking is an efficient strategy for improving the interaction with customers and suppliers. A large number of the eMarkets (e.g. e2open, Covisint, Globalnetexchange, Chemconnect) have been founded in order to reduce the costs of the procurement process by using a common standard. IBM provides an illustration of the cost-saving potential: although increased electronic sales brought savings of USD 1 billion in 1999, this only corresponds to 17% of IBM’s total turnover. In comparison, Dell handles 50% of its turnover via the Net [cf. Sager 2000]. Another example of the cost-saving potential is the EC solution at ETA SA (cf. Chap. 6) which achieved a tenfold reduction in handling costs. New business opportunities. Business Networking can support companies in developing innovative business models and new opportunities in the market. This mainly refers to new intermediaries, such as Amazon, Dell, Market-Site. net or the Ariba network (cf. Chaps. 3 and 4.2). An example described in more detail was the supply chain integration center that Riverwood is planning to develop from their VMI solution (cf. Chap. 5.7) or the procurement service offered by Deutsche Telekom (cf. Chap. 14.2).