Business to Business (B2B) involves financial transactions between 2 businesses, which may not necessarily be limited to a certain geographical location. In recent years, owing to the Vietnamese Reform, many Vietnamese businesses have embraced e-commerce in their operations and have benefited greatly. Businesses engaging in B2B transactions have found themselves able to enhance their business processes, cut costs as well as foster closer relationships with their clients. In today’s globalized world, Vietnam has acknowledged the importance of the B2B model.
As of 2007, it was reported that e-commerce was at a nascent stage in Vietnam. Since then, more and more Vietnamese suppliers and traders have adopted the use of e-commerce to their businesses. Under Vietnam’s Overall Plan on Developing E-commerce in the 2006-2010 approved by the Vietnamese government last year, by 2010, it is expected that about 60% of large businesses will conduct B2B e-commerce and about 80% of small and medium firms B2C or B2B. One way of tapping on the B2B model is by businesses ensuring global visibility through being listed on B2B e-commerce websites which hosts a list of businesses which can offer products and services. The Vietnam B2B market is a diverse one and offers a range of products like agricultural commodities, automobile, toys, furniture and so on to a large worldwide consumer market.
Despite a large number of businesses engaging in business to business transactions, there are still many more businesses which are still in the process of getting acquainted with doing business online. Given that the emergence of the business to business market in Vietnam is relatively new, this market promises to increase only when a completely rigid and solid legal framework comes into effect to regulate these business to business transactions. A good portion of the Vietnamese is still learning to control and make use of B2B technologies to their full capacity. This appears to be promising as Vietnam can expect more B2B websites to emerge in the years to follow.
