David Fitzgerald, CEO, Email: dfitzg@ocean.com.au
Stewart Adam, Senior Lecturer, School of Marketing, RMIT University, Level 14, 239 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 3000. Email: stewart.adam@rmit.edu.au
Internet, customer service, trade hubs, interactive, intranet, extranet, relationship, electronic marketing, value, sustainable competitive advantage, learning organization, automation, fulfilment, share of customer, data base management, pure navigator, affiliation, richness, reach, convergence, portals.
For many business-to-business (B2B) organisations, the Internet is a customer service tool beyond compare. As Internet usage increases in the business sector, enterprises will be in a position to gain a sustainable competitive advantage from adding online value to existing client relationships.
The focus of this paper is the Internet's strength as a powerful B2B customer service tool, rather than its potential as a business-to-consumer (B2C) publicity and transaction medium. More specifically, "pure navigator" sites that attempt to organise the massive amount of information exchanged over the Internet are considered in depth and emerge as the newest opportunity in online business. Moreover, as the development of this direction is considered, a logical progression to trade hubs highlights the level of specific industry knowledge "pure navigators" should command so as to facilitate B2B commerce.
Examples, such as LookSmart.com.au assist web users in their search for information. They enable users to browse by category both domestically and internationally through links on their site and have demonstrated clear value as a portal application to consumers. As B2B activity begins to gather momentum over the Internet, a more sophisticated approach to organising information, that is industry specific is likely to provide industry with tools to conduct their business online with their preferred suppliers through the one site.
Growth in Internet related transactions is likely to develop most prominently from B2B services, with intermediaries hosting trade related sites to create a forum for buyers and sellers to interact globally. Although this concept is relatively new, it is predicted that " by the year 2002, such forums (trade hubs) will account for one quarter of all business-to-business related transactions over the Internet" [HREF 1].
Enterprises that stand to benefit from this new trading experience will be those that incorporate high quality service delivery into their vision, mission and strategy, rather than purely focusing on sales.
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