From: FatButterfly@lists.dynapolis.com on behalf of Andrew White [awhite2@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 7:58 PM To: Fat Butterfly DTE Forum Subject: RE: [FB] Collaborative Commerce I can't resist this one. It's Sunday; I am away from home (again) at a conference where the title is, "Performing Solo today is no easy feat...Collaborative Relationships in a Changing Economy." Three quarters or more of this large conference will have little to do with (true) collaboration. And when collaboration is rightly discussed, it will be confused several times with: Cooperation Coercion Co-epetition Collusion Cloberation (a new word we made up in 1999 in "Rise and Fall of the Trading Exchange") Negotiation and others. No, I don't think that C-C the same as what e-business is all about. C-C is a sub-set and only applicable in some cases. e-Business is a catch-all term used by many people to mean anything remotely electronic and business related: that would include EDI, EAI, XML, ERP over the web, order management, e-procurement, e-Catalog and any other e-word that is related to business or B2B. I do think that C-C was meant to be electronic and more precisely Internet based. C-C was first coined by GartnerGroup late in 1999 - when the "e" movement was still focused on procurement. We all know what happened to those folks. Gartner, like of few others of us, realized that if we all sit back and assumed that the so-called New Economy was all about moving a companies EDI transactions to the web, or better still, converting them to XML, then we would probably have "missed it". When Larry Ellison (a big fish at the present time in a big pond; albeit a tad smaller today than a year ago) said that the "Internet changes everything" he was talking more of hot air when to comes to slapping a browser on the end of an ERP system. Some have called that lipstick on a pig. In 1999, some people questioned this so called wisdom: surely there was to be more than just XML and transactions and auctions and all that? Well, that was what Collaborative Commerce is meant to represent. The point that Gartner was making is that there will be new, disruptive business processes that actually leverage the Internet (that cannot operate without it) that will overturn many of the old, currently established (read: Status Quo) processes - and that implies (according to the Innovators Dilemma) means that old, established status-quo vendors too. The problem is that there are way too few new, innovative and disruptive business processes to talk about. It turns out that what was thought to be innovative 18 months ago by many is now clearly not. Gartner saw this. An auction is an auction is an auction. It is a worthwhile process to serve a specific need: if it is webbed based it is better, faster, and quicker (if implemented well) but it is still an auction. What can we do to eliminate the need for an auction? A customer order is a customer order is a customer order. It has not change din form or function in 25 years. I would politely suggest that the Customer Order life cycle has an end date. If we as innovators can provide new business processes, founded on true collaboration, that changes the transaction and hence the relationship between buyer and seller (let's get rid of the term "buyer" and "seller" for such relationships) then we can get rid of the Customer Orders (and attendant Purchase Order). Fighting talk and not stuff that ERP'ers care to talk much about. C-C generally talks about new processes "outside the 4-walls". There is not a lot that can be done to any processes "behind the 4-walls" that can disrupt a value chain when it would be competing with companies that are aligning themselves in great value-chains (or value-webs' the term is irrelevant). The game has moved beyond the enterprise: ERP is dead (another argumentative point I know) from the strategic viewpoint. Competitive differentiation cannot be maintained if a business focuses solely on what goes on behind the fire wall: they have to innovate now outside the firewall and with strategic business partners - far more than they did in the past. That is the essence of collaborative commerce. Any new process might contain elements of what we no know as "ERP" or other processes that operate behind the 4-walls - but it is likely to differentiate itself in its approach to how business interact with business. And I don;t mean how they physically connect: the mechanism to connect is but one "enabling" part. The value is in the processes, not the connection. Some (elsewhere) have said that B2B value will be released/uncovered when companies can connect with all their partners freely and cheaply. I don't think that this is correct: What if I take a faster car to the same end point; surely I just get there faster. The game has moved the end point. The rules do not care for the mechanism you use, but they care where you end up. C-C is all about the fact that the rails have moved; how you keep on those rails is your problem. I had to do a presentation to a large ERP user group last week and the title of the presentation was, "What is Collaborative Commerce?" It was met with nods from the user community and with some red faces and concern from the vendor perspective: too many (not this one) ERP vendors use the words (and they have too, for marketing reasons) and yet do noting to contribute to this area. I am sure this question will generate a cool thread. I am sure that there will be differing opinions. Nothing like a good logical discussion. I have a white paper Called "Return on Relationship versus ROI" that I will send if anyone cares for it. It describes the evolution from Product Life Cycle, to Customer Life Cycle, to Relationship lifecycle and discusses the differing economics. It also compares the short term focused "ROI" calculation with a broader, more strategic analysis of strategic relationships. Note that there is little new thinking here! It is really just a bunch of ideas that have converged. I will leave it up to the readers (those that volunteer) to comment. Andrew -----Original Message----- From: FatButterfly@lists.dynapolis.com [mailto:FatButterfly@lists.dynapolis.com] On Behalf Of Dave Waters Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2001 10:11 PM To: Fat Butterfly DTE Forum Subject: [FB] Collaborative Commerce What are some of the top Collaborative Commerce Companies. I have read a lot of articles saying Collaborative Commerce is the Big Thing now but isn't e-business all about Collaborative Commerce anyway. dave waters http://www.supplychaintoday.com View/reply at Collaborative Commerce -------------------------- This discussion forum is sponsored by Dynapolis Internet Services . Web-based archives are at: http://forums.nmm.com To unsubscribe, send an email to: fatbutterfly-off@lists.dynapolis.com Questions: listmaster@dynapolis.com --------------------------