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FROM THE EDITOR: MANUFACTURERS GAIN BY USING A CUSTOMER-FOCUSED ONLINE SOURCING VENUE.

Article Excerpt
In the face of intensifying global competition and ever-increasing customer demands for products that meet their specific requirements and are delivered as needed, it is imperative for manufacturers to take initiatives to significantly reduce the time and cost involved in sourcing and procuring their supplies, key components, and services. Moreover, suppliers of manufactured goods and services are under increasing pressure to boost their business prospects by finding new customers and serving their accounts in the most efficient and expedient manner possible. Suppliers, who have traditionally conducted business in a 30 mile radius of their locality, realize the need to diversify their client base into the larger world marketplace.

The sourcing and supply of custom-manufactured goods and services can particularly be time consuming and prone to inefficiencies, as buyers spend considerable time and effort trying to find the optimal supplier for such non-commodity-type items and suppliers struggle to find a wider base of customers and to most efficiently and effectively address the specific needs of a greater array of clients.

Online marketplaces, driven by the universal reach of the Internet, allow for significantly compressing the sourcing and quoting of manufactured items and greatly facilitate the ability of buyers and suppliers to interact with each other and forge mutually beneficial business relationships more rapidly, without being constrained by geographical location. An online marketplace is especially valuable for streamlining the sourcing and supply of made-to-order items that need to address the customer's particular specifications.

It can be particularly difficult for a buyer to find the right supplier for such custom-made components or parts; and it can require great effort for suppliers of such items to find attractive customers for whom they have the resources to serve. Moreover, an online marketplace provides a venue for optimizing the opportunities for both buyers and suppliers when it allows each party to freely interact as equals to determine the most suitable candidate to win an order and is not merely an auction-type marketplace that only benefits the buyer.

ManufacturingQuote, Inc. (Atlanta, GA, 770-444-9686)(www.mfgquote.com) has pioneered the use of the Internet to source made-to-order...

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