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High setup costs

8 September, 2015 - 14:52

Often the setup of a B2B system is an expensive endeavor. Many of the earlier B2B systems (e.g. the EDI technologies) were proprietary systems, meaning that they were custom-built, and thus there were higher upfront investment costs for each participating member in the EDI system. Telecommunications costs were also significant, particularly because many of these systems used dedicated communication lines. Total setup costs included technology systems setup as well as the cost of change in internal business processes and the education and training required to put these systems into operations. The cost barrier has been reduced significantly with the arrival of the Internet, however, cost remains an issue for many organizations. New models for B2B system delivery promise to be significantly cheaper as many Internet-enabled B2B systems are not technology dependant. This means that any business can implement the B2B solution irrespective of the type of IT system the business and its trading partners are using.