Matching Corporate Buyers And Sellers

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The main purpose of this project is to investigate Business to Business (B2B) e-marketplace operating platform and explore the strategies to increase market efficiencies by improving e-marketplace services. This project is based on Golden Star Trading Agency (GST) who once implemented e-marketplace website and dissolved this site in 2005 due to the lack of participated companies’ interest and preference. That’s partly why I added the objective of exploring the strategies to increase market efficiency to successfully appeal the businesses and companies.

Comprehensive research has been carried out into the functionalities and content of e-marketplace website which are oriented to B2B commerce. I have also done critical review and rehash into e-commerce theories, concepts and knowledge that I learned on Business Information Technology programme to embark onto this project.

INTRODUCTION

(The Internet change the way we do things)

Entering the third millennium, we are experiencing one of the most important shifts to our daily lives – the move to an Internet-based society. The number of Internet users worldwide top 3.4 billion by latest in December 2012 according to Internet World Stats (internetworldstats.com). As a result, much has changed at home, school, work and in the government. One of the most significant changes is in how we conduct business, especially in how we manage marketplaces and trading. For example, one of my friend in London pays all his bills online, trades stock online, buys airline and event tickets online, buys books online, and purchased his computer, memory sticks online, to cite just a few examples.

By looking at these facts, the impression on doing business on the Web is clear and proven. It is called Electronic commerce (EC) which simply indicates that electronically buying and selling goods, services, and information over networks, mostly the Internet. The years between 2005 and 2007 have been characterised by the emergence of Web 2.0, which expanded the boundaries of e-commerce by broadly conducting the trades between Business to Business.

(B2B and E-Marketplace’s Role)

Business-to-business (B2B) describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. For example, several of Dell’s and Marks & Spencer’s applications involve B2B with their suppliers. Gartner (ePaynews 2004, 2005) estimated that the worldwide B2B transactions volume in 2005 was $8.5 trillion.

The growth of this so-called B2B commerce distinctly shapes and results the modernized trading platform known as B2B oriented e-marketplace. E-marketplace is an online marketplace where buyers and sellers purchase, sell and exchange goods or services, usually in B2B, all the participants are either businesses or other organisations. By bringing together large numbers of buyers and sellers and by automating transactions, e-marketplaces expand the choices available to buyers, give sellers access to new customers (buyers), and reduce transaction costs for all participants. According to Bakos (1998), electronic markets play a central role in the economy, facilitating the exchange of information, goods, services, and payments.

(Confirmed Project Objective)

In this project, detailed research into the context of how e-marketplaces operate in the current e-commerce world has done. Also, I have tried to explore the ways to improve e-marketplaces services and functions by exploiting my e-commerce knowledge. After that, this project attempts to develop e-marketplace website for Golden Star Trading (GST) by utilising the research results.

BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT

(Looking for Business Case Study – Golden Star Trading Services Agency)

I have been motivated to embark on this project since I learned about B2B e-marketplace on e-commerce subject. After confirming the project title, I had to look for appropriate Business Case Study to initiate this project. In the meantime, I have met with Golden Star Trading Service Agency (GST) and the manager agreed to use their business as a case study. In this report, Golden Star Trading Agency will be referred to as "GST" in pseudonym.

Golden Star Trading Service Agency (GST) is the agency providing different kinds of trading services which are consulting, training class, export & import license application, matching buyers and sellers, contract management and organizes auctions.

GST is a well-known and trustworthy Service Agency in their business world. GST have a good communication and relationship with several corporate businesses and companies not only in our local area but also in neighborhood countries such as China, Thailand and India. GST have total of seven branch offices in Yangon, Mandalay, ShweLi, Myawady, Bangkok and Shanghai.

(Driving forces to implement e-commerce solution – E-Marketplace)

The story has to way back in 2005 when GST developed their first e-marketplace website for clients in Myanmar. Their pioneer e-marketplace website was unsuccessful and had to dissolve in December 2005. Since GST has implemented e-marketplace once, a lot of mistakes are realized and this failure was wake of a new challenge to take on.

In 2010, GST drew a master business plan and corporate strategic goals for long terms. As one of their strategic goal in the business plan, they constantly want to offer value-added trading services to their clients more rapidly and efficiently with the lower price.

In addition, GST’s corporate ambition is to extend their trading transactions into global business world. GST does not satisfy to accomplish this ambition just by simply hosting the company website for advertising purpose. They want the complete business solution to support different kinds of business transactions such as matching buyers and sellers, online negotiation and auctions.

After they discovered several e-commerce business models, they have decided to setup the e-marketplace website again to improve market efficiency for their clients.

(Initial expectations and business goals)

On the e-marketplace website, GST generally plan and expect to provide four main trading services:

Matching buyers and sellers to negotiate prices on a dynamic and real-time basis

Ensuring trust among participants by maintaining a neutral position

Facilitating market operations by supporting certain transaction phases, and

Aggregating sophisticated products e-catalog from several sellers.

Together with these initial expected services, GST set two main business goals (benefits)

To overcome existing barriers to enter global business world, and

To tackle the problems dealing with current offline system and work procedure.

I have acquired this information from GST General Manager at my first chance to interview for 15 minutes. This interview assured my decision to use GST business as project’s case study because their requirements are exactly same with my desirable investigation field.

I would like to continue this report with detail discussion of GST’s current situation and work procedure. Only after that, their existing problems associated to the expectations on e-marketplace website will be discussed.

CURRENT SITUATION AND WORK PROCEDURE (aka. Work Flow)

(Matching Corporate Buyers and Sellers)

Currently, GST has to appoint a lot of office staffs to operate these daily trading services. The main objective of this business function is to fulfill purchasing force of corporate buyers and to increase sales force of corporate sellers. Corporate buyers and sellers include large organization as well as SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises).

Firstly, corporate buyer makes a purchase requisition to GST for their purchasing items and desired quantity. Within limited time duration, GST has to search several corporate sellers until getting enough quantity to fulfill purchase requisition. Then GST has to approve purchase requisition availability percentage and reply back to the corporate buyer. If trading is going to happen between corporate buyer and sellers, GST takes necessary responsibility to make contract, price negotiation, logistics, and settlements in accordance with commercial code, contract law and intellectual property protection.

In the phenomenon, corporate sellers can register their business to GST to establish new markets to find new buyers and reduce sales risks.

From a holistic view point, GST play as a third party between corporate buyer and seller, by undertaking the exchange of information, goods, services, and payments. In the process, they create economic value for buyers and sellers.

There are two types of payment systems (revenue models) applied in GST – Transaction fees and Fee for service.

Transaction fee: Transaction fees are basically intended for corporate sellers. In this system, sellers have to pay a commission for each transaction they make. Standard commission percentage is 2% but it may be varied from 2% to 5% upon the amount of transactions. However, sellers may object to transaction fees, especially when regular customers are involved.

Fee for service: Fee for service is intended for both sellers and buyers. It only need to pay for specific value-added service that GTS provided such as making contract, logistics and settlements.

To deal with all the above tasks, GST has invested three main computerized systems – Supplier Management System, Customer Relationship Management and Transaction Management System. But all the communications are carried out by telephone and e-mail.

(Facilitating Auctions)

GST divided a separate department for auctions and tendering functions.

An Auction is an individual business process intended for sellers. An auction is a market mechanism that uses a competitive process by which a seller solicits consecutive bids from buyers. This is also known as forward auctions. (Another kind of auction "reverse" is not supported in GST currently).

The auction process starts when the seller request GST to organize the auction. The seller has to provide detail information about the products and desirable price. After that, GST prepares the venue to hold auction, collects sufficient number of buyers and selects specific staffs for this auction. In this process, the seller could provide the auction venue and desirable buyers list to GST.

There are three types of auction that GST provided – small, medium and large. These types are generally defined by the number of guests (buyers), facilities and the size of the venue. According to auction type, the service fees are varied.

(5 Main Reasons why Businesses rely on GST)

When I was interviewing GST’s manager, I had the controversial question why not corporate buyers and sellers make direct business transactions. I have learned "Disintermediation" phenomenon in the e-commerce subject. This concept is to eliminate the intermediary like GST and make direct transactions between buyers and sellers.

GST’s manager gave me a very long answer to approve their GST is efficient and effective for the businesses. I have organized this answer in a more structured way to describe in this report by five main reasons.

Reduce customers’ costs and providing opportunities for obtaining information about the prices and product offers of alternative suppliers

Reduce suppliers’ costs and providing opportunities for communicating information about their prices and product characteristics to additional customers

Customers can achieve competitive lower prices from alternative suppliers instead of relying too much on only one supplier

Building trust between buyers and sellers by keeping legal issues

Increase efficiency of business transaction by undertaking logistics, settlement, and insurance in necessary.

PROBLEMS WITH THE EXISTING SYSTEM

The existing system and work procedure have major weakness and problems. They require more flexible way of doing things. Firstly, I would like to discuss the problems in "Matching buyers and sellers" business operation.

Problems in matching buyers and sellers

(The weakness of communication)

Currently when the corporate buyers want to make a purchase requisition, they have to come in person, or by phone or by e-mail. Also GST mainly use phone communication to contact corporate sellers and buyers, sometimes with e-mail. Obviously, these cases have their own weak points. Although clients personally come to GST office can provide complete information of purchase requisition, distinct clients will face inconvenience and waste travelling time and cost.

On the other hand, contact on the phone, is the comfortable one but not the best solution since there may be inaccuracies and missing information in discussing with corporate clients. Moreover, by e-mail may be the worst scenario and will not be possible without pervious or future conversation.

(Troublesome Paper Catalog)

GST has to aggregate different products information offered by several corporate sellers, and store product database at Supplier Management System. GTS has to produce printed paper catalogs to be offered to corporate buyers. There are a lot of disadvantages in printed paper catalogs. When product information is changed, printed paper catalogs cannot be updated promptly and leading high cost to produce new version.

In addition, since only a limited number of products can be displayed in paper catalogs, the conflicts with corporate sellers may rise. The worst problem is the impossibility to create customized product catalog for each corporate buyer. A customized catalog is a catalog assembled specifically for a company.

(Difficult to initiate new business model and revenue model)

Doing business in these days is not easy, it constantly need to update itself. GST also tries to provide new services that can provide benefits to both clients and market. Particularly, GST wants to introduce "Group Purchasing" business models.

With group purchasing, orders from several buyers are aggregated into volume purchases so that better prices can be negotiated. However, it is now difficult to join corporate buyers together into a group in current business procedure. The buyers are individually existed and there is no environment for them to meet, collaborate and join.

GST want to establish the online environment where all their corporate buyers can aggregate their purchasing forces and bargaining market power. Vice versa, the sellers also are happy to sell large amount of their products.

Due to the limitation of report’s length, I would like to describe only above three problems although there are others. I would like to continue this section with "Facilitating Auction" business operation.

(Problems in facilitating auction)

(Limitation of auction time)

After facilitating many auctions, GST notice some problems in their organized auctions. Sometimes, sellers might not get the highest price possible even though GST organized the auction very well. There are also complains that bidders did not get what they really want or they paid too much for the item.

The source of the problems is auctions generally last only a few minutes, or even seconds, for each item sold. Therefore, this rapid process may give potential buyers little time to make a decision, so they may decide not to bid. Consequently, sellers may not get the high price from these buyers. In the same phenomenon, the bidders do not have much time to examine the goods. Bidders have difficulty learning about auctions and cannot compare what is offered at each location.

(Expensive to hold auction)

In the last year 2012, the demand to this service "facilitate auction" is relatively fall down in GST. GST analyzed their clients and external corporate sellers to know about why they gradually less interest on auction. The most common problem is the high cost to hold one successful auction even though it cannot be known whether all the auctioned items will be sold.

Firstly, bidders must usually be physically present at auctions; thus, it consume travelling time and cost. Second, it cost a lot for sellers to move goods to an auction site. In addition, commissions are fairly high because a location must be rented, the auction needs to be advertised, and an auctioneer and other employees need to be paid.

Therefore, in 2013, GTS sets the decision to build Electronic Auction system where all the parties can be cheaply and effectively participated to sell and bid.

SOLUTION (PROPOSED SYSTEM)

To tackle all the problems described above, it surely needs to build e-marketplace website where GST served as an intermediary. There are several types of e-marketplace platform so that it needs to choose the right one with correct functions before implementation starts.

Although there are a lot of categorizations to e-marketplace, I would like to describe the simple and suitable categorization for this project – private and public e-marketplace. Private e-marketplaces are those owned and operated by a single company, either corporate seller or buyer. Public e-marketplaces are B2B markets which are usually owned by a third party (not a seller or a buyer), and they serve many sellers and many buyers.

As an analyst, I am sure it must be public e-marketplace in case of GST. Therefore, the research will be subjected to emphasize only on public e-marketplace.

Initial Requirements of the Proposed System (Problems Definition)

Since it is the early stage of the project, the requirements cannot be defined exactly and may be changed later.

Firstly, the e-marketplace website should support all the basic functionalities and services of public e-marketplace. The detail of functionality requirements will be discussed in the next section "functional scope".

Second, the system must need to encounter the problems in the current situation. By going online, the communication problem will be solved automatically since all the parties can communicate via e-marketplace website (platform) over the Internet.

Third, the proposed system must need to develop e-catalog to solve paper-catalog problems. E-catalog should consist of a product list, directory and search capabilities, and a presentation function. It also should able to support the feature to be customized specifically for a buyer.

Fourth, new business model "Group Purchasing" phenomenon should be introduced in the e-marketplace solution. E-marketplace website serves as a virtual place where several buyers from different locations can meet and discussed to join into a group.

Fifth, as the final, e-auction may be implemented in a way to be able to seamlessly integrate into the e-marketplace solution. There should be a separate section (web page) for auctions where the sellers can post their auctioned products, desirable price and limited time to bid. However, all the background auction transactions and tasks (payments, logistics, privacy & security) should be served by GST to assure these auctions are going in the legal road. But it is an optional function in system development due to strict time limitation of the project.

Functional Scope of the Proposed System

In the first interview with GST’s manager, I did not get the enough time to discuss the functionalities of e-marketplace website. Therefore, I referenced to Tumolo (2001) description of e-marketplace functions and selected the basic ones that are suited in this project.

For clarity purpose, I categorize the main functions into a table as the following:

Functions of public e-marketplace

Matching buyers and sellers

Facilitating transactions

Maintaining exchange policies

providing directories of buyers and sellers;

establish product offerings;

aggregate and posting different products for sale;

providing price and product information;

matching supplier offerings with buyer preferences;

enabling price and product comparisons;

arranging for group purchasing;

organizing bids and auctions;

providing the trading platform and mechanisms (delivery information, or services);

providing billing and payment information;

registering and qualifying buyers and suppliers;

granting exchange access to users;

maintaining appropriate security over information and transactions;

ascertaining compliance with commercial law;

providing interface capability to standard systems of buyers and suppliers;

obtaining appropriate site advertisers and collecting advertising and other fees;

High-Level Business Use Case Diagram (at Initial Stage)

Literature Review

OVERVIEW

The aim of this chapter is to review the theories and concepts of B2B e-marketplace models and working practices acquired through reading academic research papers and E-Commerce reference books. Among several B2B e-marketplaces types, the emphasis is mainly concentrated on "Public E-marketplace" platform. The acquired knowledge is put into practice through system development process as discussed in the introductory chapter.

This chapter attempts to discover in-depth the basic e-marketplace functionalities covered in the functional scope of this project. Together with them, the success factors for an organization to establish e-marketplace will be discussed as a master plan to the system set up.

DEFINITION OF E-MARKETPLACE

There are several definitions of e-marketplace in accordance with research topics and abstraction level. I would like to describe my own understanding on definition of e-marketplace. The e-marketplace is a virtual marketplace where buyers and suppliers (sellers) meet to exchange information about product and service offers, and to negotiate and carry out business transactions.

In simple words, e-marketplace is a Web-based information system, where multiple suppliers and multiple buyers can undertake business transactions via the Internet. Actually, the pioneer e-marketplace systems were neither based on the Internet nor web system. In 1970s, it utilized the technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Fund Transfer (EFI). Starting from 1991, E-commerce businesses became more alive when the Internet was opened to commercial use. The year of 1995 could not be forgotten as it marked the beginning of two giants in the e-commerce business - Amazon and eBay, which do not need any introduction these days.

However, nowadays, in the age of the Internet and with the emergence of new information and communication technologies, the e-marketplace primarily uses Internet technologies and standards to distribute product data and to facilitate online transactions.

The functions of an e-market are the same as that of a physical marketplace; however, computerized systems tend to make markets much more efficient by providing more updated information to buyers and sellers.

CATEGORIES OF E-MARKETPLACE

After discussion about the definition, I assume that discussion of e-marketplace categories would be the best choice because functionalities, working practices, components and theories are completely varied upon the categorization.

There are many different types of e-marketplaces operating on the Internet. It can be generally distinguished two types: private and public.

Private E-Marketplaces

Private E-Marketplace are generally owned and operated by a single company, either corporate sellers or corporate buyers.

The sell-side e-marketplace is usually implemented by a single vendor for seeking many buyers. Its aim is to create or retain value and market power in any transaction. For example, Cisco, will sell either standard or customized products (build-to-order) to qualified companies; this type of selling is considered to one-to-many.

The buy-side e-marketplace is controlled by one or more corporate buyers with the aim of shifting power and value on the marketplace to the buyer’s side. In this type of marketplace, a company purchases from many suppliers; this type of purchasing is considered to be many-to-one. For instance, Raffles Hotel buys is supplies from approved vendors that come to its market.

Private marketplaces are frequently accessible and only to selected members and are not publicly regulated.

Public E-Marketplaces

Neutral e-marketplaces are set up by third-party intermediaries to match many buyers to many sellers.

Project Proposal

Undergraduate Final Year Project Proposal

Exploring ways to modernize B2B Channeling e-Marketplace Platform

NAING NYO THU RA

B.Sc. Hons (Business Information Technology)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Overview

The objective of this project is to analyse and discover how B2B (Business to Business) e-Marketplace Platform can serve more effective and responsive to business buyers and sellers by exploiting modernized e-Trading ways and ideas. The willingness to initiate this project is mainly motivated by the e-commerce course that I studied in second term BIT academic year.

This project will try to conduct three main tasks to fulfil the objective. As the first, the project will be initiated by studying and investigating the current popular B2B e-Marketplaces and Exchanges to get detail knowledge of how they are operating and how B2B transactions are occurring. Secondly, the project continues by reviewing the B2B e-commerce theories and concepts that are studied in BIT e-commerce course. In this review, advanced discovering into some modernized e-commerce topics may be organized and performed to cover required in-depth knowledge.

By doing these two tasks, I assume I will have the intelligence to integrate the usefulness of e-trading concepts into the practicality of real-world e-marketplace. By utilizing this intelligence, the project will attempt to develop the e-Marketplace website orienting to B2B trading purposes based on the knowledge acquired by doing previous tasks.

B2B (Business-to-Business) can be easily defined as commerce transactions between business and business instead of business to customer. The very simple example could be about TIBCO software house purchased 1,000 desktop computers from Dell. The e-marketplace is a virtual marketplace where buyers and suppliers meet to exchange information about product and service offers, and to negotiate and carry out business transactions (Archer and Gebauer 2000).

This project especially reflects the interests in the strategic concepts of Reverse Auctions and Group Purchasing (Aggregating Business Buyers). Reverse auction is becoming the most popular and hot e-procurement method in B2B commerce world. It is a tendering system in which suppliers are invited to bid on the fulfilment of an order and the lowest bid wins. On the other hand, many companies, especially SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), are moving to Group Purchasing. With this method, orders from several buyers are aggregated into volume purchases so that better prices can be negotiated. These two concepts will be especially analysed in this project.

Aim

By analysing the context of this research project, the research objective can be stated.

The objective of this research project is to explore how modernized e-Commerce trading ideas and concepts can be adopted and integrated into the practicality of e-marketplace B2B platforms.

Objectives in Details

Investigative Research of B2B e-marketplace operating ways and format

Surf and study popular B2B e-marketplace sites

Investigate how they provide services to the participants (the businesses, companies, enterprises and manufacturers)

Deliverables:

Part of Literature Review

Review on B2B e-commerce theory and concepts

Discover e-commerce B2B trading methods and techniques

Analyse the advantages and disadvantages of each trading methods

Deliverables:

Part of Literature Review

Analysis on integration of e-marketplace real-world practices and e-commerce theories

Explore which e-trading concepts can be utilized and which are not

Analyse how the e-trading concepts can be fitted into the e-marketplace

Deliverables:

Analysis and Research

Design and Implement e-marketplace website

Find out business case study

Selecting the system development framework

Design and develop e-marketplace website

Deliverables:

E-marketplace website

Associated system development documentation

Test the implemented functionalities with test cases and test data

Design test cases

Test functionalities of software

Deliverables:

Test Log

To critically evaluate the system

Critical evaluation of the analysis and research work done

Critical evaluation of the process of the project

Problems and Difficulties met during the project lifetime

Personal evaluation

Deliverables:

Evaluation of the Project

Initial Study of the project

Purchasing Powers of the Businesses

Every business, no matter its size or industry, buys goods and services. It includes both direct goods and indirect goods. Direct goods means materials used to support production (e.g., steel in a car or paper in a book). Indirect goods means materials used in activities that support production (e.g., office supplies or light bulbs).

If we carefully look into this part of the business world, their total amount of expenditures on purchase good is staggering. According to AMR Research, U.S. public companies spent an average of 63% of revenues for direct goods and services, and another 18% for indirect goods, for a total of $11.5 trillion in 1999. The math is pretty straightforward -- companies devote the bulk of their revenues to purchase other goods.

Unavoidable Place for Businesses – E-Marketplace

With so much money flowing through the purchasing process, there should be one place where the companies able to purchase with lowest price and best services as well as the manufactures able to sell their products in large quantities and negotiated price. To fulfill this concept, many suppliers should be exhibited at that place so that the buyers can choose the best product from the large range. In additions, cause of there are many suppliers, they will strongly compete selling their product with lowest price.

On the other hand, every manufactures or industries want to meet many potential buyers who would actually buy their products in large quantities. Normal buyer (consumer) could purchase only a few quantities. The company or enterprise business could purchase the product in large quantities. For example, the computer student could purchase only one desktop but the software house business might purchase large quantities of desktop. In just one sentence, it needs a place where many large buyers and many large sellers can meet easily for the purpose of trading with best opportunities and options. It is e-marketplace. With the advance in the development of Electronic Commerce technologies and the Internet, e-marketplace has been emerged where buyers and sellers can easily and rapidly trade their products electronically with preferred prices and options.

Generally, e-marketplace could serve four main mechanisms that cause marketplaces to add value:

Matching buyers and sellers to negotiate prices on a dynamic and real-time basis,

Ensuring trust among participants by maintaining a neutral position,

Facilitating market operations by supporting certain transaction phases, and

Aggregating together a large number of buyers and sellers.

The success of the e-marketplace depends on the perceived net benefit of buyers and suppliers. From the viewpoint of transaction cost economics, information technology helps to reduce transaction costs, risks, and coordinating costs of e-marketplaces (Clemons and others 1993).

Legal and Ethical Issues

Legal issues are the most important things that should take emphasise when implementing one IT project. Therefore, it needs to adopt appropriate laws for this project to avoid from the risk of legal issues. There is one main legal issue that should be considered for this project research as well as system implementation.

Adopting Intellectual Property Law

These laws are normally patent control, copyright control, trademark law and other variety in laws such as unfair competition and licensing. A good example with copyright can be if a business wants to use some programs or design of any other creation, it needs agreement with owner of creation. Therefore, all copyright materials which are used for the completion of this project will be properly referred.

Privacy

Privacy issues should be mainly emphasized under the title of ethical. Privacy issue can be defined as personal right to be freely performed specific actions.

Especially the system implementation of this project could include lot business confidential information. Therefore, the system should not use this business information in the wrong purposes or intentionally collected and distributed. The users of this system should agree to the specific data protection laws in the areas of they use the system.

This system used the data usage and protection guidance specified by Information Commissioner‟s Office (ICO) organisation.

(http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection.aspx)

Critical Success Factors

The main factor that most contributed to the completion of this project is to have clear objectives in breaking down of the project. These objectives and sub-objectives must reflect to SMART properties such as specific, measurable, agree, realistic and time-related.

The second important factor is the necessity of good project management in specific fields of the project such planning and controlling. The main emphasis of project management will be the time because this project has exact time limitation. The third contributing factor is ability to choose right research methods, data collection techniques, system development methodology, technology and properly scope to the system implementation.

The fourth important success factor is the sufficient availability of the resources and proper supports from any sources. A best example is the guidance from the project supervisor. Also the information availability is important in this project because it is research-based.

Initial Reference

[1] Electronic Commerce – Managerial Perspective [Turban, Pearson International Edition]

[2] The Platform for Corporate [A PurchasePro Inc. White Paper, 2001]

[3] Organisational Factors for Successful Entering To E-Marketplace [By Andreja Pucihar on Tue, 18th Nov, 2003]