A New Study of the Value of E-Commerce Technology

The true test of any business technology is how much return it can provide on the investment that was required to implement it. Better still, if the benefit of the technology can be reflected in the overall performance of the company, its investment can pay dividends.

In the ocean container shipping industry, business-to-business (B2B) e-Commerce technology can have a significant and measurable impact on a company’s stock price when it solves fundamental challenges in how the company handles its ocean container shipping activities.

Starting back in the 1990s, several studies have attempted to measure the effects of information technology on firm productivity.

Most of the analyses at the firm level established a positive relationship between various measures of investment in information technology and firm productivity.

However, there are no firm-level studies of eCommerce technology that link quantifiable cost savings and productivity gains with such factors as:

• Efficiencies from the automation of transactions,
• Economic advantages of new market intermediaries,
• Consolidation of demand and supply through organized exchanges; and
• Changes in the extent of vertical integration of companies.