November 16, 2005

After more than a year in development, Bahrain has launched its first B2B trading platform to help local businesses.

The Internet-based service, with a strong focus in bringing useful enhancements and cost reductions to both buyers and sellers, aims to facilitate the real-time and dynamic exchange of information and B2B transactions between trading partners in a truly interactive way.

Mr. Kanoo hailed the launch of the new service as yet another milestone in the Chamber's achievements and also as a major landmark in the development of Bahrain's commercial infrastructure.

'In addition to the numerous facilities and incentives offered by the Kingdom to local businesses and foreign investors, Bahrain now offers a state of the art e-commerce infrastructure, one that will allow them to transact electronically with their trading partners anywhere in the world,' said Mr. Kanoo.

Mr. Kanoo thanked the IT & E-Commerce committee for their hard work in bringing this project to fruition and also BTN for their efforts to make the service live in such a short time span.

Dr. Tawfeeq Almoayed, head of the IT and e-Commerce Committee of the BCC&I said: 'This is a very exciting time for E-Commerce in Bahrain.

We found that more and more Bahraini companies are acknowledging that e-procurement is the way forward. The main problem is that while the large organizations are implementing complex systems, the vast majority of small & medium businesses have little or no access to expensive e-procurement technology. This is prohibitive to the growth of local B2B e-commerce.'

'We really wanted to encourage businesses of all sizes to benefit from E.Business, and the logical answer was a hosted e-procurement exchange - one central location on the web - where local businesses could meet and trade electronically with each other (and with their international partners), irrespective of the type of in-house systems they have implemented,' he added.

ezTrade.bh will offer a range of subscription-based business to business and business to consumer services and applications including hosted web sites, online product showroom, hosted catalogs, electronic transaction processing, Auctions & Tenders, etc.

William Rowe, General Manager of BTN said: 'Our service bridges the technology gap that exists between the large organizations and their SMB trading partners.

It provides an e-business infrastructure for all; a system that not only enables companies to buy and sell their goods online, but also to process electronically all the documents that are associated with the transaction. The system provides a range of value added internet based services, not only catering for business to business (B2B), but also for business to consumer (B2C).'

According to Rowe, the real power of the service comes from a state of the art, first of its kind Document Exchange engine which can translate electronic documents in real time.

'Basically, the Document Exchange acts as a clearinghouse for electronic documents. For example, an electronic purchase order generated by a SAP system of a buyer will be converted online for use by an Oracle or SQL Server based system of a supplier.

The supplier's invoice will then be converted and fed back into the SAP system. Companies that do not have such sophisticated solutions in-house can take full advantage of our comprehensive web based E-Business system online for a fraction of the cost.'

'This is what makes our value proposition so unique - any company that is interested in trading electronically with its partners needs to have only one electronic connection, to us.

We take care of connecting them to the rest of the world. The solution has been built on a combination of internet technologies ranging from old to the new. BTN have leveraged the tried and tested EDI and integration technologies of GE - who have been active in the B2B arena for more than 30 years - with the new and exciting web technologies of Oracle and Microsoft.'

He added, 'We are currently in the process of setting up a consortium of companies to operate the project and are planning to support the growth of the community with an extremely user-friendly business model.'

The ezTrade.bh service also connects seamlessly to the Federation of GCC Chambers of Commerce (FGCCC) new e-marketplace and companies in Bahrain will be able to connect to a larger regional marketplace thus increasing their market size.

Source: AME Info