Abstract
As discussed in the previous chapters, e-partnerships have a number of advantages and benefits that can help organizations sustain and achieve their organizational goals in today’s e-business world. “The rewards of a happy union can be both substantial and satisfying. But, just like marriage, the failure rate is alarmingly high” (Seligman, 2001, p. 34). Partnering companies often face the challenges of sharing customer information; integrating business, IT processes and systems; and aligning business models. As e-partnership has gained momentum, the difficult question posed to managers is not why e-partnerships are necessary, but how to make them work. Like e-business and e-commerce, e-partnership faces a range of issues relating to the use of Internet and IT technologies as well as the reliance on inter-organizational interfaces. The rapid development and advance of information and Internet technologies have triggered a whole range of possibilities for integration and alignment of systems among e-partners and supply chain members. For example, the partnership between Exostar (an e-marketplace) and Federation (a software provider) provides trading partners of the e-marketplace with opportunities to securely exchange information in the key design and manufacturing process. Coordination of product data information including product engineering data both internally and across the supply chain is made possible in the Exostar e-marketplace. With Federation’s software, Exostar’s customers are able to securely and inexpensively interconnect and share engineering product data from their Product Data/Lifecycle Management (PDM/PLM) system with their partners and suppliers (Withrow & Brock, 2004).