Business Networking — Summary and Outlook

This book has described Business Networking as one of the seven trends companies have to address in order to remain competitive (cf. Chap. 2.3). Its relevance is growing and companies failing to develop strategies for Business Networking will either miss out on opportunities or suffer from pursuing their partner relationships on an erratic basis. Throughout this book the need for networkability has been stressed considering the impetus it is bound to give to the cooperation with business partners. Networkability reduces the time and cost of establishing partner relationships as well as the specificity of the investments undertaken. The cases studied brought out the two main areas which Business Networking strategies are apt to support:Improved efficiency of interorganizational workflows. Links to suppliers and customers have to be supported by every company. They are increasingly global in nature. Business Networking is an efficient strategy to interface with partners and to streamline existing business processes. For example, introducing the electronic commerce solution at ETA (cf. Chap. 6) led to significant efficiencies in order processing and improvements in customer service.New business opportunities. Business Networking can sustain companies in developing new market segments. Shaping new business models generates opportunities and the Internet provides a constant flow of new examples of companies that succeeded in outmaneuvering established players thanks to innovative business concepts. Prominent examples, such as Amazon.com, Dell or MarketSite.net, were mentioned in Chapter 3. An example described in more detail was the supply chain integration centers that Riverwood is planning to develop from their VMI-solution (cf. Chap. 5.7).