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Tuesday, 3 April 2001
Standard Bank's B2B ecommerce marketplace goes live
thetradestandard fully operational after successful pilot
Standard Bank’s business-to-business e-commerce marketplace, thetradestandard, went live this week, with 21 buyers and seven suppliers now trading online. This comes after a two-month pilot with external customers to ensure system stability, fine-tune processes and make functional improvements based on customer feedback.
The seven suppliers currently operating on thetradestandard are Businesscard Online, First Technology, Ince, Office Equipment Products, Siltek, TCM Small Systems and Xerox, covering product categories of computer hardware, software and peripherals, stationery and consumables, office equipment and personalised stationery. Brands offered include Canon, Compaq, Epson, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lexmark, Lotus, Mecer, Microsoft, Philips, Symantec and Xerox. These product categories will be continually expanded to meet customer requirements.
thetradestandard is a horizontal marketplace, focusing on the purchase of generic goods and services that are required by most businesses, although not used directly in the process of manufacturing products or selling services. It is designed to realise procurement efficiencies in South African businesses by creating an online trading environment with streamlined, automated purchasing processes and direct access to a range of suppliers with competitively priced goods.
These features allow buying organisations to reap the benefit of extensive cost savings without requiring upfront investment and give suppliers more cost-effective access to a broader market. The strategy is to focus on established, reputable suppliers of leading brands who are able to provide the right quality of product and service to buyers.
Magnus Taljaard, Director of E-Commerce at Standard Bank comments:
"We are very pleased with the progress on thetradestandard. Although a very new field in South Africa, the B2B market is expected to be worth around R150 billion by 2005*. The current buyers and suppliers have responded very positively to our marketplace and are already experiencing the benefits of purchasing online. We are expecting a steady adoption over the next year."
"Before the Nasdaq crash there was a great deal of hype around the business-to-business ecommerce market. Although the hype has disappeared, the reality still remains that there are some significant efficiencies and cost savings to be made by moving procurement online. We are happy to be operating in a normalised environment again where real business principles can be applied effectively in selling our service."
"We are confident that we have taken the right business approach and that we are well positioned to grow the marketplace substantially over the next couple of years. Our experience shows that, despite generally high technology literacy and interest in ecommerce, South African businesses do not yet have a full understanding of the benefits of ecommerce, so guiding and informing our clients is a key part of our marketing strategy.
"We expect thetradestandard to follow an adoption curve similar to what we saw in business electronic banking, which started off slowly in the 1990s and moved to become a critical, strategic service offered by the bank and demanded by customers."
thetradestandard also assists businesses with the movement to online trading by providing a simple, easy-to-use service with high levels of professional support and expertise. thetradestandard integrates seamlessly into the bank’s Business Electronic Banking platform (CATS and best2000) for payment of orders placed on thetradestandard.
*Source BMI TechKnowledge
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