| These days, any bank or brokerage firm worth its currency lets its customers conduct online transactions. Now financial services firms are taking their e-business efforts to the next level by widening the breadth of services they offer to businesses and consumers. And they are using the Internet to communicate with each other, suppliers and partners.
However, even for the largest of banks and brokerages, much of their effort is still a work in progress as they attempt to build infrastructures to offer new services and add new forms of connectivity. Still, the Internet already is letting these companies streamline traditional processes such as procurement, and many are already using the Net to conduct a broad set of B2B transactions — everything from trading equities and bonds between firms to procuring goods online.
Banks and brokerages are looking to intercompany links to offer more sophisticated services such as account aggregation, which can be used to provide personalized consulting, and new online investment products such as bonds, which still are predominantly sold through traditional brokers.
And while B2B marketplaces are most often associated with procurement and supply chain logistics for companies that manufacture goods, banks and brokerages are establishing their own exchanges. Still, while 68 percent of banks and brokerages surveyed are selling products and services online today, nearly half say they have not forged electronic links over the Internet with business partners and suppliers, according to InternetWeek’s third annual Transformation Of The Enterprise research study. |
