of course,a fragmented marketplace provides both opportunities and challenges.
Indeed,buyers recognize that by forcing many suppliers that offer similar products to compete against each other,procurement cost can be significantly reduced.
Unfortunately,to achieve these lower costs,buyers need significant expertise in the procurement process,which many of them did not have.
It is this environment that led to the initial offering of independent e-marketplaces with either a vertical-industry focus or a horizontal-business-process or functional focus.
Companies such as FreeMarkets (now part of Ariba)or VerticalNet offered both expertise in the procurement proocess and the ability to force competition between a large number of suppliers.