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INTERNET TRADELINE |
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Internet Tradeline, Inc. (ITI) now offers a chance for small businesses to enter the e-commerce market. The company is offering Internet Business Sites that are designed to deliver a packaged e-commerce service to manufacturing companies, their distributors, and suppliers. |
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According to the company, these business sites will provide an end-to-end solution which allows companies to I ) communicate more effectively with existing distributors, customers, and suppliers, as well as their own sales offices and staff, 2) transact business electronically with trading partners, and 3) integrate companies' on-line transactions with their back office operations and financial systems. These systems differ from most other Web-based electronic commerce systems in that client information, including electronic catalogs, is stored in a relational database, not HTML-coded Web pages. According to a company spokesman, other features include: a promotional presence on the Internet, a link electronically with key trading partners, increased product and service sales, securely controlled information access, and accelerated distribution of product/service information
Background:
World Trade Exchange™ (WTE) is an international, business to business network which provides free and universal access to updated, detailed information about SMEs and their products. The system, accessible on the world wide web (www) at http://www.wte.net, facilitates spontaneous, electronic commerce transactions by allowing business to business browsers to select products displayed on WTE and immediately initiate the exchange of purchase orders, acknowledgements, and invoices, using the WWW as the medium. WTE is now available in English, French, German, Hungarian, and Russian-language versions.
Additionally, WTE links together Web Commerce sites. These sites, created for individual companies, use the WWW as a medium to facilitate daily business operations, by exchanging commerce documentation, communicating pricing and other product offering changes, and facilitating the sales process.
ITI, an American-based company, was incorporate in 1994. ITI’s services are currently available through local representatives throughout Central and Eastern Europe. It is expected that in the course of 1997 additional partnerships will be formed in Western Europe, West Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America.
Locations:
Austria, Belorussia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Former Yugoslav Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Komi Republic, Moldavia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tatarstan, Ukraine, USA
Organisations Involved:
Internet Tradeline, Inc., ITI Switzerland, ITI Polska, ITI Hellas , ITI Cyprus, ITI Italy, International Trade Management , Fair Business Line Holdings, Internet Fair Business Line Slovakia
Contact Point:
Leonid Khutorsky; 111 West 40th Street; New York, NY 10018-2506; tel: 1 (212) 997-6877; fax: 1 (212) 997-6840; LKhutorsky@trade90.com; http://www.wte.net and http://www.tradeline.net
Best Practice Elements:
ITI’s electronic commerce services are particularly well suited to the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises because of the range of integrated services provided, the cost-savings which the services offer, and the universal accessibility of the services.
ITI provides a wide range of electronic commerce services, thus eliminating much of the complications facing SMEs when entering the electronic marketplace, as well as most of the financial investment (in hardware purchase, technical training and support personnel) otherwise required. These services include both a private network for conducting commerce with current business partners, and exposure within an international, business to business network, including detailed product information, for making new business contacts. Furthermore, ITI provides all data processing, hosting, and maintenance, in addition to user training, so that SMEs do not need to contract multiple providers.
This integrated solution further benefits the SME because the company and product information is accessible with hierarchical access levels through both the public and private network. This allows SMEs to maintain and update all of their electronic corporate and product information in one location, eliminating redundancies and errors. All purchasing activity is based on the SMEs online product catalogues, which can be changed by the client from its own desktop. This minimises the errors, manual processing time, and therefore the cost of transactions, enabling SMEs to better compete in the global marketplace by decreasing their traditional operations costs, and gaining greater access to international markets on a cost-effective basis.
Furthermore, all of the client’s online product and company information is developed from its existing marketing and sales materials, thus minimising the investment required for creation of additional, online marketing materials. ITI’s processing and hosting charges are cost-effective not only relative to other electronic commerce services, but as a supplement to traditional methods of printing and disseminating such information.
ITI’s services utilise the existing infrastructure of the World Wide Web because of its universal accessibility. Furthermore, system requirements are limited to a personal computer with Windows operating system, thus minimising additional hardware purchases. ITI’s internal Systems Consulting Group can also provide a back-office feed to integrate the company’s online order submission through its WWW site with their legacy back office system, to maximise efficiency.
Finally, ITI’s international network of representatives provides an active, local representation for the project. These international partners proactively market the benefits of electronic commerce within their local business communities and as appropriate for the local culture.
Ongoing Outcome:
All of the electronic commerce tools mentioned above have already been completed, tested, validated, and are operational. They are widely available for immediate deployment by SMEs.
ITI currently provides information on more than 30,000 companies through World Trade Exchange. These companies represent a cross-section of industries and geographic regions. The information provided on each company ranges from a directory listing with contact information, vendors’ gross annual sales, and especially to online product catalogues, corporate publications, and multimedia presentations.
In addition to making their product and company information available through World Trade Exchange, a number of companies are currently in the process of establishing Web Commerce sites to facilitate transactions with their current business networks. In meetings with its customers, ITI has been advised that its electronic commerce services will significantly improve their business results.
ITI expects that the full implementation of these systems will result in the following:
- Increased competitiveness, and reduced isolation on a global scale for SMEs
- Improved global access to company and product information related to individual SMEs
- Facilitation of online commercial transactions
- Promotion of electronic commerce as a valuable tool for SMEs to conduct international business
- Increased access for SMEs to electronic commerce tools
- Decreased communications costs
- Reduced operations costs through elimination of manual processing and errors in order processing, as well as significantly improved media for publishing and distributing product and other marketing information.