CocoCommerce, an aggregator of electronic transaction fulfillment and settlement services today launched eNetSettle, a software platform that combines the offerings of several escrow, payment and logistics services. The company also named its first customer, SoluMed.com, a marketplace for used, refurbished and surplus medical equipment.
CocoCommerce's platform currently offers services from eight vendors, including PitneyPay, Escrow.com, freightquote.com and ILS Leasing. Customers can use these services collectively for different functions of the financial process, and "plug in" preferred service providers of their own.
SoluMed.com's marketplace receives close to 350,000 hits per month from medical equipment dealers; resellers; finance companies who get equipment off lease; manufacturers with demo and trade-in equipment; and physicians looking to buy equipment. Cynthia Schuster, president and founder of SoluMed, said an earlier implementation with an escrow service provider was a "long, long process, an involved and complicated integration," and that other point solutions were also unacceptable. CocoCommerce's solution, on the other hand, involved a single integration, and allows for a variety of escrow services; financing options for medical equipment; appraisal services; and shipping."I like this solution in that it is a comprehensive package for our customers' order fulfillment needs," she says. "I think it's important to offer several solutions to the customer for comparison shopping. It makes them feel more empowered with the decision-making process."
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E-Payment: Not Yet
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Thursday, October 11, 2001
That leads us to yet another strategy, one of process aggregator as practiced by startup CocoCommerce. On its eNetSettle platform, the company has gathered eight financial service providers which can be used by buyers and sellers alone or in consort with proprietary service providers, without upfront integration costs or extra fees. "You might use Escrow.com and
freightquote.com at the same time, you might want to add your own service providers," says Melkon Khosrovian, CocoCommerce VP of planning and strategic commerce. "The benefit might not be direct cost savings versus auctioning the business out, but you'll save in efficiencies."
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Value-added Services
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March 2001 issue
Value-added services come in because there's growing recognition that just pairing buyers with sellers
to transact a deal is not enough. That won't woo enough participants to build an exchange's liquidity,
and it won't bring enough revenue to guarantee financial health. "The key to an exchange's success will be
value-added services," says Stan Lepeak, Chief Research Officer at Ajunto. http://www.ajunto.com/ "Most
exchanges understand this conceptually but don't know what the value-added services are yet."
Vernon Keenan, of Keenan Vision, says exchanges that exist mainly to pair buyers and sellers need to reinvent themselves along lines appropriate to their industries. Once they do this, which services are basic and which are value-added will become clearer. " For the electronics industry, collaboration may be core, but in construction it might be value-added," he says.
Three
phases of development that are common for all net markets
Jupiter Research's MarketAccess Report
Marc Harrison, research director of Jupiter's Custom Strategy and Research Group identified three
phases of development that are common for all net markets:
Buy Side Aggregation: Buyers require relevant content
Real Time availability: Focus shifts to supply side integration and advanced functionality
Value-Added Transactions: Decision support systems and new revenue sources are critical to
long-term viability and success in today's net markets.
Jupiter Research's MarketAccess Report on the market's infrastructure is based on a series of 80
interviews with leading executives in technology areas, as well as from net markets.
The ability to provide services will be a clear differentiator among exchanges as both corporate and
individual customers look for the most secure, liquid, feature-filled, and user-friendly place to
conduct transactions.
Selling value added services to exchange members creates demand for well-outfitted exchanges.
Thus, the number of unique value added services offered by a particular exchange, becomes a
primary factor in determining the value of that exchange.
