Collaboration with Suppliers and Business Partners

Building and maintaining business-to-business relationships is one of the foremost opportunities the Internet presents to growing businesses. According to IDC, 68 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees sell to other businesses. Internet Business Solution tools such as Web-based procurement, supply chain management, and trading community software raise the ability of businesses to cooperate and collaborate to new levels.

• Improve inventory management---Over the Internet, companies can easily share current information and work together to optimize inventory management. This is often done via an extranet, or private link over the Internet between a company and its selected business partners. By continuously providing up-to-the-minute data on both supply and distribution inventory, as well as sales trends and forecasts, extranets allow growing businesses to make more timely and accurate purchasing decisions. This can reduce your costs, allow you to better manage your supply and demand, improve your cash flow, and increase customer satisfaction.

• Reduce travel and communications overhead---Online collaboration can reduce, if not eliminate, the need for travel, phone calls, faxes, and overnight mail. Sharing designs, documents, and presentations interactively reduces the time and operational costs of partner and supplier communications. As many growing businesses have already discovered, the Internet can identify and prequalify potential suppliers or business partners, reducing communications and travel costs associated with prequalification.

• Collapse time-to-market---Online collaboration lets growing companies move faster. Time-to-market can be reduced by using collaboration software to align internal and external resources, and simultaneously review product designs, proposals, contracts, and other documents. By streamlining the processes associated with gathering, organizing and reviewing information, companies can get their products or services to market ahead of the competition. This allows growing businesses to maintain a competitive edge.

This article was adapted from Cisco's The Internet Empowers Growing Businesses. To download the entire PDF version of this piece, click here.