InformationWeek

oftware vendors that claim they enable collaboration among and within companies are becoming as numerous as technology vendors that tout "seamless, end-to-end, Web-enabled solutions." Peel back the sweeping promises, however, and distinct classes of software emerge that are best used to help companies streamline specific interactions with suppliers, customers, and partners, or even create new ways of sharing ideas and tackling problems across company walls.

Truly collaborative applications go beyond transaction-oriented E-commerce to facilitate "human idea exchange," on topics ranging from product design to contract negotiation, says Dan Miklovic, a Gartner analyst. "Humans are definitely involved in collaborative commerce." Numerous startups have staked a claim in this market, as have enterprise software old guards, such as Oracle and SAP, but none have produced a dominant platform. There are likely as many collaboration applications on the market as there are ways in which companies interact with one another.

Manufacturers may benefit the most from the collaborative applications available now. The design of new products, their production and assembly, and their distribution and marketing all require coordination among multiple companies, spawning Web software to facilitate the processes involved in each. Collaborative design applications let product engineers share, modify, and track changes to design files and specifications, identify suppliers and locate parts, and access project-management tools that monitor tasks, deadlines, and chains of approval. Vendors of computer-aided design software, such as Dassault Systemes, MatrixOne, Parametric Technologies, SDRC, and Unigraphics, all offer tools in these areas. Other vendors targeting this market include Agile Software, Alventive, Centric Software, CoCreate Software, Framework Technologies, NexPrise, and RedSpark.

Companies that use collaborative design tools report savings as a result of reducing travel costs, paper use, and administrative work. Theyıre also confident that greater communication among design partners ultimately will yield higher customer satisfaction and a more-efficient production line. On the other hand, a survey of 578 companies conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers and Ernst & Young shows that companies that share engineering data with suppliers and with employees report a longer average product-development cycle than those that donıt share such data.

But that doesnıt surprise Kevin Vasconi, chief technology officer and senior VP of technology at auto exchange Covisint LLC. "You canıt use these new tools in exactly the same way that youıve run your business and expect to get the same kind of dramatic benefits out of them," he says. "These tools are very different from the way people work today, and you may have to change the way you do some processes."

Another frontier of manufacturing collaboration is supply-chain management and inventory control. Tools from Adexa, J.D. Edwards, i2 Technologies, Logility, Manugistics, Oracle, SAP, SynQuest, SeeCommerce, Viewlocity, and WebPlan let manufacturers create and share demand forecasts and production plans with suppliers, monitor inventory and supplier performance, and track and resolve glitches in their plans, such as a late or missing shipment of components. Supply-chain collaboration packages for makers of chemicals and food and beverages, which produce goods based on formulas or recipes rather than bills of material, include Aspen Technology, Formation Systems, and Sequentia. They deliver many of the same benefits as supply-chain packages for discrete manufacturing--monitoring and planning plant capacity, integrating business processes with trading partners, and streamlining the development cycle.

Beyond manufacturing, a new class of tools is emerging to help companies negotiate with suppliers via the Web concerning terms and conditions of contracts. Contract-management software helps companies ensure they get the rebates, discounts, and other choice items for which theyıre eligible. Software providers of online contract-negotiation software include diCarta, I-many, MyContracts, TradeAccess, and Webango.

For professional-services and consulting firms, where human capital is the lifeblood of the trade, online project-management applications and resource-allocation tools from Evolve, Niku, Novient, Opus 360, PeopleSoft, and Portera are providing new levels of collaboration and communication in service industries, particularly IT services. These tools let companies track skills, experience, and availability of consultants, as well as billable time and expenses. They also help companies collaborate on project plans and proposals for new business. The benefits include creation of more-efficient work teams, reuse of existing intellectual capital, and more profitable projects.

Peer-to-peer technology is evolving a new breed of project-management tools. FlyPaper, Groove Networks, Ikimbo, and Oculous Technologies all provide secure, shared virtual work spaces, instant messaging, and file sharing for communication among individuals via the Internet without the need for a central server. Such tools can help companies coordinate projects, meetings, events, and respond to problems and opportunities with key customers and partners.

Integration tools from vendors such as SeeBeyond, Tibco Software, and webMethods, as well as electronic data interchange, also provide vehicles for sharing electronic documents and data among companies. Cargill Inc., a $48 billion agricultural products manufacturer, is implementing webMethods software to take orders from customers and provide product documentation. But the company says implementing collaborative technologies requires painstaking planning and testing with partners involved. "You have to understand the risks of an open pipe or gateway," says Jay Singleton, manager of enterprise applications. "You have to make sure there arenıt mixed messages or redundancy. For instance, you donıt want to send a shipping notice before you get a purchase order."

Although new applications are promising, undertaking a collaboration project is foremost a business decision, bound to fundamentally alter a companyıs operations, practices, policies, and relationships. "Collaborative commerce will disrupt processes and put new demands on relationships and applications, making adoption harder than it might appear," states a Gartner Research Note authored by Miklovic. "Everything from data ownership to project management will be affected." That said, proceed with caution