Biz To Biz

When most people think e-commerce, they think of business-to-consumer sites like Amazon or E-Bay. But most e-commerce is business-to-business, and BizToBiz e-commerce is probably one of the reasons for the upsurge in US industrial productivity in the past few years. As long as companies just automated their internal operations, white-collar productivity did not improve much, but when companies can automate the way they interact, they can be much more efficient.

I smell a SilverBullet here. Per TomPeters, one simplifies workflow _first_, then automates. If BizToBiz can be burdened with the credit of increasing US productivity, then the HawthorneEffect also shares some blame. --PhlIp

Take a look at a book entitled Competing Against Time ISBN 0-02-915291-7 , which was one of TomPeters main sources. The authors did a bunch of research that found less than 5% of the time materials spent in supply chains was involved in adding value. In other words, more than 95% was wasted. Most of the wasted time was involved in crossing company boundaries. I agree that simplification comes first, and often automation is not necessary. I would probably call it material flow instead of work flow simplification - the two are different, but interconnected. One big improvement is eliminating purchase orders, in other words, getting rid of one piece of "automation" from a previous stage of technology. But there is a lot of low-hanging fat in BizToBiz, which is why (I think) business people are interested. --BobHaugen

This is not surprising to programmers in the Bay Area. If I had a nickel for every "unique opportunity in the business to business e-commerce space" e-mail I've received in the past few months, I'd be funding startups, not working for them. --JohnBrewer