Collaborative Commerce

Abstract

This chapter introduces collaborative commerce as a means of integrating information technologies into e-business adoption. It explains how companies use information technology to achieve a closer integration and a better management of business relationships among business partners, including internal personnel, business partners, and customers. In this chapter, collaborative commerce is defined as (1) a collaborative technology, similar to workflow collaboration; (2) a customer-driven technology, similar to a pull-type supply chain; (3) a functionally integrated technology, similar to concurrent engineering; and (4) a business-driven technology, similar to enterprise resource planning, for cross-organisational integration. The authors hope that understanding the characteristics and infrastructures of collaborative commerce can improve the adoption of the technologies.