Model of Funcionalities for the Development of B2B E-Commerce Solutions

Abstract

The explosive growth of the Internet has revolutionized the way of conducting business in several areas, acting nowadays as an important channel of communication and for the trading of goods and services. Therefore, electronic commerce (EC), defined as the execution of transactions of goods and services which rely on computers mediated by informatics networks, assumes particular importance due to the benefits that it may imply for companies. In this chapter we focus on a particular type of electronic commerce: business to business (B2B). B2B describes electronic commerce associated to operations of buying and selling products and services through the Internet or through the use of private networks shared between business partners, thus replacing the physical process around commercial transactions. This type of EC facilitates conducting electronic transactions between companies. There are several B2B solutions that enable companies to make transactions from buying and selling goods and services, to participating in auctions. The analysis of such solutions enabled us to verify that there are big differences in the amount of the supported functionalities, and significant opportunities for development, with the aim of helping companies to evaluate their electronic commerce solutions and to conceive new and more complete systems. In this chapter, a new model of functionalities for the development of B2B EC solutions is presented.