Dickeson--Are You Ready for eB2B?

Give us a form that will show us every week how fast we're turning over our raw inventories. Tell us what the rate has to be to play hardball in the cyber-league. Or don't you know, Señor ImpresseCollabria? Better find out so we can all add some value.

As effective as it may be in the short term, we can't hire some goon with a baseball bat to break legs to collect our receivables. But we do need to get liquid. So, Monsieur 58Printmarket, provide us a weekly form that will show us how many hours (not days) those nice jobs you provide will drag our cash after we invoice. Teach us what to do. Tell us the steps. We don't get that every week from our trial balances and non-chargeables. We want to be dotcom-patible, if we must.

If only one out of 25 of us is even curious about using the process data we have available, and only one in 500 is challenged to dig deeper, how can we possibly compete in an auction-type environment?

We've suspected for some time that we will need to change the business model, shift the culture paradigms of the past. Is quasi-brokerage on the Internet now the engine of that change? It is proving to be such for many other industries. Is productivity now being thrust upon us? Are we facing a "Get far more competitive or die" condition? Like the fog, it's sneaking up on us on little cat feet, as the poet says. We'll accept help from any reasonable resource to be in business tomorrow.

Okay, printCafe, et al: If you have help to give to make us more efficient in our use of time, materials and capital, then we're listening. That would truly add value to your service and ours. Submit your proof that you can provide more than stale and complex general legerdemain and mythic utilization assumptions and bring on your dotcoms.