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" . . . secure visibility
into all the suppliers . . . "
John Jordan, director of electronic-commerce
research at the Center for Business Innovation, a Cambridge,
MA, research unit of Cap Gemini Eernst & Young:
"As far as new niches waiting to be filled,
one of my favorites is third-party intermediation, which will
find new applications as we get better kinds of encryption
and data standards. I may not know or trust you, but I could
trust the entity that matches us up and stands behind the
interaction (unlike eBay, which operates pretty much caveat
emptor.)
"Or suppose that I as a buyer need 100,000
units of something. You as a supplier are only good for 60,000,
but you don't want me or your competitors to know that, and
it turns out that no single supplier has all 100,000 ready
to ship. The third party (operated by a trade association,
maybe?) could have secure visibility into all the suppliers,
let me know that my need will be met, and protect you and
the other suppliers from poaching and price erosion as he
structures the transaction. Title insurers and escrow agents
perform similar functions in conventional commerce, and I
believe we'll see these kinds of support and facilitation
services expand as we understand more about what's necessary
for people to use the transational Net more aggressively."
(Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2001.)
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