Number 27: Summer 2004
Web Links
Coming Soon: A New World Order in International Trade
By Chike Edmund Nwasike
Editor's comment: We have entered a new era of world trade where size and location are largely irrelevant to a company's ability to operate on a global basis. New technology makes the global marketplace open to everybody. The technology is a great leveller and, because of this, it opens up new opportunities.
There is a new world order coming in international trade via the latest evolution in e-commerce. It promises to produce unprecedented growth for small businesses throughout the globe. The impact on consumers will be beneficial as well. New Internet tools and technologies currently being introduced will level the world trade playing field, providing significant new opportunities and benefits to small companies.
For example, a small textile company in Manchester, England will be able to order goods from manufacturers in China and ship finished product to distributors for delivery to retail outlets in Des Moines, Iowa—USA, Buenos Aires, Argentina and other cities across continents. The Manchester company will partner with manufacturers and distributors throughout the world, penetrating markets previously beyond reach.
The Web-based partnerships forged by small businesses will command competitive and cost advantages such as order aggregation, combined shipments and back office fulfillment. There will be positive consequences, too, for consumers, and for middle class growth in emerging major producing countries, such as China and India, making them attractive markets for Western manufacturers.
In addition, real-time Web-based systems will enable small business partnerships to take advantage of just-in-time manufacturing and sourcing of products and strike deals with buyers and distributors – much sought after features of supply chain management. These systems will interface with third party facilitators such as banks, courier services and shippers. They also will permit access to auction markets, traditional store fronts and private electronic market places.
The small business global partnerships will benefit in the marketing arena as well. They will be able to use new e-commerce capabilities to collaborate on advertising, public relations and email campaigns that will be localized to meet cultural and national requirements of the various regions of the world. Again, the aggregation will produce significant financial savings. By the same token, the collaboration can produce customer surveys, coupon promotions and other sales lures tailored to the purchasing habits and criteria of communities in all parts of the globe at negligible costs.
To ensure universal access to these Web-based opportunities and facilitate the global e-commerce trading process, small business partners can adopt an international UN-sponsored document standard called ebXML (electronic business using eXtensible markup language). The power and utility of ebXML is well supported by UN standards for electronic business collaboration
As described on its Web site, “ebXML is a modular suite of specifications that enables enterprises of any size and in any geographical location to conduct business over the Internet. Using ebXML, companies have a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms and define and register business processes.”
The merging of Web-based systems and software and their multiple offerings with the power of private and public marketplaces not only will be fueling exploding new world trade partnerships and opportunities for small businesses. It will challenge the power of nations to retain absolute control over trade.
The Internet is the perfect medium to power a new era in global partnerships in this fast shrinking and changing world. The future will belong to those who can adequately harness these new capabilities and technologies.
Karl Marx’s sentiment about workers of the world uniting was only half right. In this new age of e-commerce it will be businesses and entrepreneurs who unite.
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© Chike Edmund Nwasike /
Through the Loop Consulting Ltd 1998-2004