"To make global trading webs work, it's all about customer acquisition, not large, up-front software license sales," says Chuck Donchess, Commerce One's VP of marketing and business development. "More participation is the key to trading communities; it's the `network effect.' The more buyers, the more suppliers, and vice versa."

Promus Hotel Corp. in Memphis, Tenn., one of the world's largest hotel chains with more than 1,400 locations, selected the Commerce Chain Solution for several reasons, says Aman Bawa, E-commerce architect and program manager.

A critical one was that Commerce One provides content-management services that bring together product information and prices into an online catalog. "With some of the other solutions we evaluated, we would have had to bring in another party to outsource catalog content creation and maintenance," says Bawa.

Promus' initial goal is to push 80% of its food and beverage, operating supplies, and equipment spending through the system. Ultimately, it wants to drive all of these purchases online. Currently, there are eight suppliers and 45 users in a pilot phase, but the Promus system will encompass all of its 250 suppliers and 1,400 hotels by late 2000.

Bawa still has two items on his wish list for Commerce One: He would like to see features that support multiple departments such as approval workflow, spending limits, and other system administration functions at the hotel level, and he'd like automated invoice delivery and payment through the system.

Intelisys
In its third year of operation, Intelisys has 19 customers, including heavyweights Ford Motor Co. and Texas Instruments. While the company doesn't release financial information, it is 50% owned by Chase Manhattan.

IEC-Enterprise, Intelisys' flagship product, provides buyers with approved supplier catalogs and processes the purchasing transaction over the Internet. The marketplace offering is Intelisys.com.

Not surprisingly, Chase uses IEC-Enterprise for its own procurement needs. "We looked at Intelisys as automating the entire process," says Jonathan Baum, Chase's VP of procurement services. "We get an electronic invoice from the vendor and pay it electronically through the Automated Clearing House or a paper check. Chase completed a pilot in July and plans to have the product on 25,000 desktops with approximately 250 suppliers by late 2000.

Intelisys' approach focuses on supplier-managed content vs. maintaining internal catalogs. Content management is totally in the hands of the suppliers, which makes this solution different. The advantage is that content management is taken care of, but users have less control over the entire process.

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