InformationWeek

February 15, 1999

Simpler E-Business

Ultraprise, Grainger debut Web sites

By Gregory Dalton, Eileen Colkin, and Clinton Wilder

Related links:

And from our sister publication:

InternetWeek CAn Online Trading Hubs Make Good On Their Promise?

wo new ventures sprouted last week in the growing Internet marketplaces for business procurement and financial services. W.W. Grainger Inc. launched a pilot of a unified E-commerce site for procuring products and services from six business-to-business suppliers. Ultraprise Corp. conducted the first transaction on its new Web site for buying and selling second mortgages on homes.

W.W. Grainger, which provides maintenance and repair supplies for businesses, created the OrderZone.com Web site with Perot Systems Corp. subsidiary Time0. OrderZone.com, using Time0's Digital Marketplace technology, offers a single entry point to online procurement sites from Cintas, Corporate Express, Grainger Industrial Supply, Lab Safety Supply, Marshall Industries, and VWR Scientific Products. "This is the early stage of a larger procurement system that covers products and services needed by businesses," says H. Ross Perot, chairman and CEO of Perot Systems.

The Time0 system pools suppliers' business processes so customers can securely access each vendor's site via OrderZone.com, place orders using a single form and receive one invoice, payable electronically. Daniel Hamburger, president of Grainger Internet Commerce, says OrderZone.com is catering to businesses that "want procurement of all indirect supplies to be easier." Other sites on OrderZone.com provide business products such as office supplies, uniforms, and security equipment.

Ultraprise is also bringing together buyers and sellers in a complicated market. Its Ultraprise.com Web site attempts to establish automated and uniform procedures in the market for second home mortgages, which is far less structured than that for primary mortgages.

"Hopefully, it will create standardization" that will attract new players, says John Cooke, VP of bulk underwriting at PSB Lending Corp. in Carlsbad, Calif. PSB used Ultraprise.com to successfully bid on mortgages worth $8 million. However, Cooke says, the site took more than a day to post confirmation of the trade.

Back to This Week's Issue

Send Us Your Feedback

Top of the Page