Extranets are the next evolutionary level of Electronic Commerce
for corporations and small businesses alike.
An Extranet is a network application that lets your company use
the Internet for secure business relationships with partners, suppliers
and customers. They provide the benefits of EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) and collaboration in a secure, yet surprisingly open
and interactive way over the Internet. By allowing companies to
extend internal systems to external business partners, they therefore
deliver competitive advantages such as the following:
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Manufacturing companies can extend the benefits of
inter-enterprise computing, traditionally served by EDI, to
production and design partners. |
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Companies can co-ordinate design, manufacturing,
scheduling and delivery across the whole supply chain. |
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Software and high technology firms can leverage the
extranet to provide support to customers and partners, and
to access remote workers all over the world. |
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Financial services and banks can use secure extranet applications
to dramatically reduce the cost of proprietary networks for
financial transactions. Banks can use Extranets to provide services
to business customers over the Internet. |
|
Digital media and publishing companies can use Extranets
to dramatically accelerate the design and production cycles
for film, video, multimedia and graphics. |
With new business models and service opportunities emerging for
Extranet-enabled companies all the time, this is a technology with
great expansion possibilities.
