B2B still needs the human touch

Today's business is too complex for business-to-business applications to cope without human intervention. And while companies should start investing now, they should be wary of the promises made by software vendors.

Today's business is too complex for business-to-business (B2B) applications to cope without human intervention. And while companies should start investing now, they should be wary of the promises made by software vendors.

These were the warnings from Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch, at last week's Line 56 ecommerce conference in London.

"It's a dead cert - B2B will come," said Lynch of the market which analysts expect to exceed $7.3tn by 2004. "It's a good idea to start investing. Understand the areas that are most likely to work given the current level of technology."

B2B technologies rely on repetitive transactions, and changes to these repeat orders are central to modern business practices, but this is likely to reduce system efficiencies, he argued.

"No one likes to mention this," said Lynch. "What's actually behind a large amount of B2B exchanges is huge numbers of people sat in a room tagging stuff into databases so the computer gets a clue as to what is going on."

"In any type of scenario, you still need human interaction," said Ben Wright, vice president of European marketing at B2B ecommerce specialist Ariba.

Lynch advises customers who are ready to invest to check the vendor's scalability and cost saving claims, and to spend time with at least three of the vendor's customers.

Forrester Research predicts that US e-market trade will exceed $1.5tn by 2004, while in Europe it will only reach $790bn by 2005. The researcher said that only six per cent of all European B2B trade in 2005 will run through an e-market.

Wright claims that customers of the firm's purchasing and marketplace technologies are making savings of up to 30 per cent.

An average purchasing implementation costs about $2m, and the average buyer spends $1m on Ariba's e-marketplace tools.