What's In Store for Online Print?
Peter Posk: Without a doubt it's integrations. Companies like ARIBA, Oracle, SAP and others all vie to be the front-end of a company's procurement process, among other MIS functions. Years ago a company did not mind if [its] employees had to access several systems to order from various vendors. [...] But having all those systems is expensive. It's expensive to train employees, it's expensive to process orders. It's just not efficient. Today, companies want one front-end for all ordering and they want all vendors to comply with back-end standards for billing and such. However, companies such as ARIBA have no interest or expertise to develop all of the web-to-print and e-commerce technologies used by each vendor. So, companies have adopted standards, like cXML, so that one front-end system can be used by an end-user.