From Competition to Consensus

According to Marie and Minacci, the manufacturers are continuing their efforts to bring additional trading partners onboard with Tradeplace, both the Web-based side and the system-to-system side. "Ultimately, the goal, which is really a dream, is to be able to handle most of our transactions — or all of our transactions with most of our customers — this way," says Marie, while adding that particular channels or specific processes, in the end, may remain outside the scope of Tradeplace for some time, if not forever. In any case, he says the manufacturers understand that the move toward integration will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. "There is a long road here," he says. "We can say we are really live now, and we are starting to be appreciated by our customers — they see the real benefit. But before we get everybody [onboard], it's going to take a while."