Online retailers in the U.S. and Canada will collect $36.6 billion during 1999, according to the report entitled "The State of Online Retailing 2.0," conducted by the Boston Consulting Group for Internet retail trade association Shop.org. The 1999 forecast is a 145 percent increase over 1998's revenues of $14.9 billion, which comprised 0.5 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. and Canada. From 1998 to 1999, the number of orders received by digital retailers increased 200 percent and the number of shoppers visiting these sites increased 300 percent.



Until recently business to business systems were based on the old EDI spec and were proprietary, complex, and difficult to set up. Switching to open Internet standards is liberating this market. With the rapid growth of the Internet, huge advances have been made allowing your company to offer access to sales applications, products, or services in a browser, reducing necessary training & clerical costs. Many companies spend as much as $150 in labor costs to process a single purchase with paper forms. Internet-based business-to-business e-commerce can offer your company enormous savings.