Vendor Landscape: B2B Business Networks

Effective document exchange is critical for B2B commerce and thus a key piece of the business technology (BT) agenda for winning, serving, and retaining customers. CIOs have three options for document exchange: supplier networks that focus on electronic purchase orders (POs) and invoices; industry-based networks for exchanging these and supply chain documents; and electronic data interchange (EDI) networks. But commoditization of the basic PO and invoice delivery is pushing all three types of vendors to offer higher-value collaboration services — and thus into competition with each other in offering business networks. CIOs and their business partners need to evaluate future potential as well as current offerings to determine which network(s) to use.