Guidelines for Managing B2B Standards Implementation

Business-To-Business (B2b)

There are different levels in which companies can engage in B2B. Egan et al (2003) divide endeavours into primitive or advanced B2B. The primitive level includes for example internal integration of operational databases, and customer transactions over the Internet. The advanced level, or full electronic commerce, refers to integrated fulfilment cycle of ordering, shipping, billing, etc. Many organisations strive for the advanced level, but most are still on their way there (Egan et al, 2003). A similar division of B2B is made by Lee et al (2003), who claim that B2B can be either basic or collaborative. Basic refers to automation of simple exchanges; while collaborative include entire networks of organisations and channel partners. In any case, B2B is focused on streamlining transactions both internally within an organisation, and externally with others (Ersala et al, 2002). Therefore, B2B exchanges are at the heart of high technology markets (Zolkiewski and Littler, 2004). We illustrate a typical B2B scenario in figure 1. This figure will be explained in more detail when introducing standards.