Marketplace Vendors Look For Smaller Customers

Even midsize companies need to join online marketplaces. Eventually. Anticipating greater demand among smaller businesses for tools to build exchanges, software makers Mapics Inc. and Radnet Inc. have teamed up to create a tool for that niche.

Mapics, an enterprise resource planning applications developer, and Web-based software maker Radnet Inc. have created TeamWeRX. The software integrates "technology from Radnet's PortalworkX, a business-to-business portal, and ties into the enterprise application backbone," says Linda Brooks, a Mapics VP. Marketplace participants and can access secure data in manufacturing, customer-service, supply-chain-management, and financial applications that is specific for their needs and view it in a customized Web application.

At least one early user, circuit-board and fiber-optic maker Electronic Manufacturing Services Inc., is sold on the product. David Black, CEO of EMS, said he's used TeamWeRX to deploy "interactive product management. And our suppliers receive requirements in real time when our supply base is low."

Production for TeamWeRX, priced at $400 per seat for hosting companies, begins Friday.