Summary form only given as follows. Business-to-business electronic commerce (B2BEC) activity worldwide is estimated to grow to several trillions of dollars within the next few years. Already, the increase in B2BEC has had an increasingly large and broad impact on industrial structures and the ways we measure and evaluate such fundamental concepts as risk, the valuation of and return on intangibles such as intellectual capital, brand-related goodwill, and service sector productivity. Major companies across the world are struggling to position themselves to take advantage of this new realm of business opportunity. The future of B2BEC, however, is clouded by challenges in determining global standards in technology, business processes, and government policy. In this paper, we review the evolution and current direction of global B2BEC in several industries and show how firms have used EC as a strategic differentiator in maximizing customer value added. We profile in detail the role of electronic commerce as a strategic enabling, infra-structural, path-breaking and multiuse technology that if properly leveraged, can lead to radical improvements in both quality and productivity in inter-firm trading relationships. We end by identifying best practices in industry and government for accelerating the deployment of electronic commerce, and for making this activity an agent of strategic change in the emerging digital economy.
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