The Web portal What you need, when you need it

Electronic News, Sept 25, 2000 by Diane Trommer

Of the latest Internet offerings, engineering services are hitting a new high.

While many have struggled to place a dollar value on information offered online, Mike Schultz, CEO of QuestLink Technology Inc. (Austin, Tex.) pegs it somewhere in the vicinity of $250 billion. Why? That is the amount of annual purchases over which electronic industry design engineers have brand and model control, he said.

Although most of the early online players have tested the business-to-business (B2B) waters with the relatively low-risk trade of excess and spot market goods, QuestLink is among the select few in the electronics space that are betting that the real pot of gold at the end of the B2B rainbow will come not to those who focus on transactions, but to those who facilitate the flow of information and collaboration throughout the design process.

"We can add the most value and make the greatest contribution to our users at the front end of the process," said Schultz. "It's all about time-to-market--not price." He estimates that up to 35% of the design process is spent gathering and assimilating information necessary for the design of a new product.

Jon Ekoniak, senior analyst with usbancorp Piper Jaffrey (Minneapolis, Minn.) believes that the opportunities for improving business processes through the use of the Net go far beyond gaining a few margin points on the sale of excess inventory.

"Companies focus on the wrong aspect of electronic commerce," said Ekoniak. "The problem is that the transaction, or how you get paid, is what is viewed as the Holy Grail of electronic commerce--not necessarily solving the problems of the industry."

"Rather than just doing transactions, Web sites need to provide a vehicle for companies to reduce cycle time, remove some of the friction in the supply chain, reduce paper in the supply chain, and eventually, automate entire processes to run entirely from computer to computer," Ekoniak said.

"As the cycle time of products declines, it is extremely important for design engineers to have access to all products that are available. Not just what they are, but specific dimensions," Ekoniak said.

To support the design process, QuestLink aggregates the supply of more than 2,000 manufacturers across three billion dollars worth of available inventory through its franchised distributor partners who also fulfill the site's demand. QuestLink's fulfillment partners include Avnet Inc., All American Semiconductor, and Nu Horizons.

Offering free online access to a database of more than 20,000 application notes (which can be searched by using the root part number, part description or product category, as well as company profiles on more than 400 manufacturers), Questlink's goal is to relieve engineers of the time-consuming, administrative portion of their jobs, so they can focus on bringing new technologies to market.

Other electronics suppliers find that supplying free online information to engineers is a first step toward bringing business to their sites. Continuing its evolution from an off-line broker to an online market maker and process enabler, PartMiner Inc. recently launched its Free Trade Zone (FTZ).

The Electronic Commerce Free Trade Zone (www.freetradezone.com) provides purchasing tools, product information, and editorial content, free-of-charge to users. The goal of the new FTZ site is to provide users with a set of collaborative tools that can help close the loop between engineering and purchasing, said Bill Barron, chief marketing officer for PartMiner, Manhattan, N.Y.

In addition to its buyers marketplace, which allows buyers to request and receive quotes, negotiate terms and place orders online with their preferred suppliers, FTZ also features PartMiner Direct, a market maker service offered to users when preferred suppliers are unable to fulfill an order.

FTZ's new Design Center contains CAPSXpert, a database of component information on more than 12 million parts featuring parametric search and a direct pin-for-pin comparison guide.

PartMiner has also recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with Innoveda Inc. (Marlboro, Mass.) and Electronics Workbench (Toronto, Canada) which will allow engineers using these design tools to load in their bill of materials and buy the parts at the FTZ site, Barron noted.

With the extensive amount of information currently available online to engineers, what many users need is a filter to help them "get some good signal out of the noise," according to Girish Mhatre, CEO for ChipCenter (Manhattan, N.Y.) ChipCenter was formed through the unlikely collaboration between distribution rivals Arrow Electronics Inc. and Avnet Inc., along with Aspect Development, CMP Media, and Pioneer-Standard Electronics Inc.

The ChipCenter "super catalog" of components available through Arrow and Avnet represents more than 900 electronic component manufacturers. The Web-based company also recently launched its new Web site www.My.ChipCenter.com feature that provides personalized content and e-commerce to users.