Electronic Business

Electronic commerce is rapidly transforming business to customer and business to business practices. For your company, it is more than buying and selling over the web, it also is using the Internet as a core part of your business strategy to penetrate new markets, streamline your production costs and improve your supplier/customer relations.   Electronic commerce can help your business grow by enabling you to be innovative and competitive.  For the forest, metals, and building products industry, whether your company offers a service or a product, electronic commerce technologies can offer cost saving solutions to support your business activities, increase your return on investment and your market share.

To learn more from experts and leading companies about the opportunities offered by electronic commerce and to discover some practical tips, programs and strategies that can help you improve your operations, visit our suggested Web sites.

• What's New
• Intelligence
• Programs
• Virtual MarketPlace - Business to Business Electronic Commerce
• Forest and Building Product Sites

What's New

• ebiz.enable
• Series of case studies by PricewaterhouseCoopers on how e-marketplaces are affecting the Canadian forest, metal and building products sectors:
  
  
  • National Transportation Exchange: A Case Study
  • National Transportation Exchange: A Case Study
  • A Shift in the Landscape: A Comparison of Third-party Intermediary Portals to Industry-backed Portals in the Global Forest and Paper Industry
  • Dofasco: An e-Business Case Study

Intelligence

• Net Readiness:
  
  Cisco Systems has developed a very good E-business readiness scorecard. The scorecard rates a company's "Net Readiness" by assessing company practices in e-business leadership, governance, organizational competencies, and technology. It assesses company responses against "best of breed" practices, gives company an overall ranking (from "Net Visionary" to "Net Agnostic"), and gives companies a basic set of recommendations that are tailored to their responses. There are 57 questions to answer, and the whole process takes about 15-30 minutes.
  
  
• E-business Info-Guide:
  
  This Info-Guide is an introduction to electronic commerce and will help you understand what it is, how it could affect your business, how existing regulations also apply to e-commerce transactions, and what government programs and services can help your business take advantage of e-commerce.
  
  
• The Digital Economy in Canada:
  
  Industry Canada has created an Digital Economy in Canada Web site to encourage the development and adoption of electronic business in Canada. This is accomplished by focussing on three main lines of business: Policy Development and Implementation, International Development and Strategies for e-business Development.

Programs

• Student Connection Program:
  
  Industry Canada's Student Connection Program provides SMEs with a hands-on, customized Internet training ranging from the very introductory to advanced search techniques, web site design, and Internet banking. (1 888 807-7777)

Virtual MarketPlace - Business to Business Electronic Commerce

• B to B Electronic commerce is that area of electronic commerce only recently starting to attract significant attention in the media. It is that form of online exchange which focuses on the the players found in traditional supply chain relationships. It is often stated that this is where the real future of electronic commerce lies and that continuing developments in this area may be the source of a significant reshaping of some industries.
  
  
  • National Transportation Exchange: A Case Study
  • A Shift in the Landscape: A Comparison of Third-party Intermediary Portals to Industry-backed Portals in the Global Forest and Paper Industry
  • Dofasco: An e-Business Case Study

Below are links to some examples of these business to business vertical hubs and online auction sites in the Forest Metal and Building Products Industry. These sites have a specific industry focus. They provide industry specific content and focus on providing procurement linkages between the players in the industry

Forest and Building Product Sites

Pulp& Paper Industry

• eFibre.com
• Forestweb
• Freemarkets Asset Exchange
• Kruger Inc.
• PaperExchange.com
• The Paper Site
• PaperTrader

Wood Industry

• E-Wood.com
  
• ForestExpress.com
• Forestindustry.com
• Canadian Tradex
• Lumber Trader
• Maschinen-Ritter
• Scawoodshop
• TimberWeb Trader

Building Products Industry

• BuildingOnline
• Construnet (in French only)
• Design Buzz