Part II of III: A Review of Solution Providers Facilitating the Ascent

The trek to the electronic summit for B2B transactions is a long but not impossible one. Celent predicts that adoption of buyer and seller-driven applications will grow from an estimated 34% of the top 1000 North American companies in 2004 to 54% by 2008.

In a new report, , Celent examines e-financial supply chain solutions and their prospects. Celent finds that there are signs that demand is picking up and that earlier slow adoption reflected the markets immaturity, not its irrelevance. Several critical factors will propel adoption: continued enhancements that improve the value proposition, financial pressure on companies to become more efficient, regulations demanding financial transaction transparency and integrity, and pricing more in line with companies cost-value equation.

According to Alenka Grealish, author of the report and manager of the banking group at Celent, "In the late 1990s, adoption of an e-invoicing and e-payables solution was legitimately viewed as entering risky territory, akin to the first ascent of a mountain. The software was relatively unproven and vendor viability was in question. Today, with blue chip companies such as Honeywell, Payless, and Verizon singing praises and behemoths such as Oracle, SAP, and FDC pursuing market share, e-financial supply chain solutions are gaining legitimacy and staying power."

Long-run staying power requires a minimum level of standardization and interfaces across solutions and networks for buyers and sellers alike. Celent believes that is highly unlikely, however, that there ever will be a single solution or network. Instead, multiple models and solutions will co-exist and in-roads into interoperability will be made. Already, there are budding signs of interconnectivity.

The report compares and contrasts ten vendors: Avolent, BCE Emergis, Bottomline Technologies, Deutsche Bank, edocs, Oracle, PowerTrack, SAP, Velosant, and Xign.

A is available online.

of Celent Communications' Wholesale Banking and research service can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.