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Questions to ask before joining an e-marketplace
By Julie Bort
Network World, 09/11/00
Overwhelmed by e-marketplace sales folk? Here's a list of questions to help you screen which ones have solid technology underpinning.
Type of e-marketplace:
Do you consider yourself a buyer-based, supplier-based or independent e-marketplace?
How do you make your money? (Subscriptions? Value-added services? Mark-up on items?)
What happens if I want to develop a long-term, one-on-one relationship with one of the trading partners outside of the marketplace?
Who ships the items? Do they come directly from other trading partners, or from a distributor or reseller?
Do you host your own content or is content hosted by the suppliers themselves?
How do you handle content changes such as price updates, discontinued items and new models?
If you outsource content management, which firm do you use?
Do you own your own data network, or is it outsourced? If outsourced, by which company?
What networking protocols do you support for connecting to the marketplace?
Can I get data generated from the marketplace to dump directly into my purchasing or enterprise resource planning system?
If so, how do you do the protocol conversions for connections and document types?
What if I need to send a fax to one of the trading partners?
Does your site conduct the transactions or are they handled off-line directly between buyer and seller?
What document types do you support?
Do you parse XML? Which XML frameworks do you support? Do you support these frameworks for all documents, or simply the major ones like invoices and purchase orders?
Can I get purchase orders and invoices customized to my specifications?
What fail-safes are in place to ensure a transaction will occur if the network has an outage?
Back to main story
The business side of e-marketplaces
A look at infrastructure building blocks
Tips on what to look for in administrative systems
Related links
Contact Senior Editor Julie Bort
A guide to infrastructure building blocks
The business side of e-marketplaces
A list of questions to ask about e-marketplace infrastructure
A list of questions to ask about e-marketplace infrastructure
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,
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