Reading, ENGLAND July 3, 2001 Clarus Corp., a B2B e-commerce solutions provider, has announced that bbtoptrade, a wholly owned subsidiary of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), has chosen Clarus eMarket as its digital exchange platform. The bbtoptrade company was formed to build the first Italian Marketplace for B2B e-commerce that will manage the entire purchasing process.
At the center of this B2B marketplace for the trade of goods and services is Clarus eMarket. This is the third implementation of the product in Europe, but the first in Italy and the first one backed by an existing "brick-and-mortar business," which is a bank, in this case.
Speaking of the official launch, Sebastiano Bianca, managing director of bbtoptrade, said, "We wanted to create a transparent, efficient and reliable marketplace to deliver the time and cost benefits of electronic commerce to Italian companies. As an experienced business manager, I am very aware of the challenges that procurement presents, and I wanted to develop a portal to address the typical concerns of finding the best supplier, negotiating a price, tracking delivery and, of course, timely payment.
Ultimately, when in full production, bbtoptrade will provide the platform services to more than 15 large corporate companies and will extend the service to 15,000 clients with catalogs from about 4,000 suppliers. The system is expected to support a volume of 5,000,000 order transactions per year.
bbtoptrade was founded by leading Italian companies within their specific market. The partners of the initiative contribute to the success of bbtoptrade, by sharing their respective competences and by participating in the marketplace for their purchases.
