Electronic Commerce: E-Commerce Standards Group Picks New Management

The OBI Consortium, a group promoting standards for business-to- business commerce over the Internet, has turned to CommerceNet for management support.

OBI-Open Buying on the Internet-previously relied on SupplyWorks, a Lexington, Mass., Internet commerce services company, for administrative duties.

With its growth to more than 55 companies, OBI has turned to what is, by Internet standards, a most venerable commercial consortium. Palo Alto, Calif.-based CommerceNet dates from 1994 and has built an international membership of more than 500 organizations.

"This strategic partnership supports the evolution of the OBI Consortium and allows us a unique opportunity to leverage CommerceNet's considerable electronic commerce experience to further the support and adoption of the OBI standard," said Monica Luechtefeld, the purchasing consortium's president.

CommerceNet president Randall C. Whiting said the relationship is in keeping with his group's mission to "help establish and accelerate the growth of electronic commerce."

The OBI and CommerceNet boards are ironing out details of a management agreement. The transition is expected to be completed by June 1.

OBI was formed in 1997, an outgrowth of an ad hoc group of Fortune 500 companies and suppliers formed a year earlier, called the Internet Purchasing Roundtable. By mid-1997 the roundtable and a key supporter, American Express Co., announced the release of an OBI standard, with support from the likes of Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and Open Market Inc.

The close identification with American Express did not deter MasterCard and Visa from joining within months of the standard's publication.

"American Express and, I would imagine, Visa and MasterCard prefer being somewhat ubiquitous and neutral in a lot of these different electronic commerce solutions," said S. Thayer Stewart, American Express' vice president for new business development.

"It's about making electronic commerce possible," said Alan Glass, MasterCard's senior vice president for electronic commerce. "You're going to get to universal acceptance, so why not start with universal acceptance?"

The card companies came together to support the Secure Electronic Transactions protocol for Internet credit card payments, and OBI can similarly help them tap into corporate purchasing transactions, which are also rapidly growing in the world of conventional commerce.

The consortium expects soon to release an updated version of the OBI specifications. The group estimates corporate buyers can save $3 million a year by using OBI.

OBI is designed to achieve uniformity and interoperability in electronic purchasing, said Ms. Luechtefeld. This requires the participation of the card companies to ease on-line payments while ensuring that their cards are an accepted payment method.

"The major payment brands have found that standards are not really the area of competition," said Janet Pruitt, a Visa International senior vice president. "We very much support the effort so we wanted to be part of the group and understand and contribute to that effort."

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People within Chase Manhattan Bank have access to Boise Cascade Office Products Corp.'s Web-based electronic catalogue.

The link is accomplished through an OBI-based electronic procurement system, IEC-Enterprise, available from Intelisys Electronic Commerce, which Chase partly owns.

"We at Chase recognize the significant potential to streamline our purchasing process, control spending, and reduce costs," said Steven Gough, vice president for corporate procurement.

"By partnering with leading suppliers like Boise, who make it easy to do business over the Internet, we are realizing this potential today. And by utilizing Intelisys' IEC-Enterprise buyer application, we know that these transactions will be both simple and secure," he said.

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