A Bellevue, Wash., software company claims that B2B commerce hits a bottleneck in the transportation sector.

In a press release, Edifecs (www.edifecs.com) said a company study indicates that it takes a carrier 5.8 months to set up online trading with a single partner.
The problem, according to Edifecs, is the process of preparing a company, its internal systems and its trading partners for conducting online transactions. That setup process is largely conducted manually with a great detail of faxing, telephoning, e-mailing, and visual checking and re-checking of details. Most of these details must be repeated each time a company sets up a new electronic process with a trading partner.
Not surprisingly, Edifecs markets software that helps automate the process of setting up e-commerce partners.
Some highlights of the study, called "Solving the B2B Ramp-up Challenge," are:

• 46 percent of transportation companies surveyed currently conduct B2B operations with less than one-fourth of their trading-partner base.

• 77 percent conduct fewer than 15 processes electronically with their partners.

• 46 percent exchange fewer than 5,000 electronic transactions a month.

• 70 percent expect to trade electronically with more than three-fourths of their partner base in coming years.

According to the press release, nearly 400 e-commerce managers were polled, 9 percent of whom were transportation providers.
Edifecs spokesman, Steve Spenser, said the survey results were not unexpected.