Getting started with B2B and how it applies to purchasing
Purchase order software is the first step for most retailers when getting involved with business to business technologies. While the actual PO software does not imply a direct connect from retailer to their vendors, B2B is usually not an option without a purchase order system on the retail side and some sort of inventory management software, or at the minimum some sort of small business inventory software on the vendor side.
A question we get a lot of is: how do you get started with B2B? Provided that you do have some online ordering software suite, how do you take the next step? How do you start doing things like pulling catalog lists, full catalogs, and available to ship(ATS) information from your suppliers? Is this a reasonable task for the do it yourselfers out there? If you were looking to outsource, what should you look for in an outsource company? When it comes down to implementing B2B technologies, what are the core building blocks – do you need to know about XSLT, XML, web services? How should these technologies be rolled out, what are the most common steps to take when you decide to go for it.
There is a great presentation, getting started with B2B, that covers all of these topics in solid detail. The full transcript can also be found right alongside it.