The five-year-old consortium has over 400 of the world’s leading electronic components (EC), information technology (IT), semiconductor manufacturing (SM) and solution provider (SP) companies in its fold.
Among its key members are American Express, Microsoft, Netscape and IBM, which are working to standardize labels for supply chain elements like product descriptions, part numbers, pricing data and inventory status. The group hinges its initiatives on XML, a mark-up language that lets programmers classify information with tags.
RosettaNet Phils. is the sixth affiliate organization in Asia, and counts Ayala Port Inc., Bayantrade, Intel, Motorola and the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc. (SEIPI) as its incorporators and founding members.
Membership though is not limited to companies from the four industries mentioned but to any company – big or small – that desires to automate its supply chain using RosettaNet’s non-proprietary language and processes for e-business. But membership is not free. Annual regular and associate memberships cost P100,000 and P50,000, respectively.
Jennifer Hamilton, CEO of RosettaNet, said mounting competitive pressure globally to achieve operational efficiency, the transition from linear to dynamic supply chain, and increased support for XML as a low-cost alternative to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) are just some of the trends that inspired the development of RosettaNet to enable mass adoption of business-to-business processes.
In a launch ceremony at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel early this week, Trade and Industry Secretary Mar Roxas II welcomed the possibilities that RosettaNet could offer local companies in terms of integrating their electronic buying and selling abilities in a global scope.
"We should be able to benchmark our ability to conduct buying and selling in the e-space. We should be at par with our global trading partners to ensure the viability of our high-tech industry, which provides so many jobs," Roxas said.
Total Philippine exports run at $32 billion, 70 percent of which come from the semicon and electronics business.
Roxas was also particularly hopeful about how RosettaNet could help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country participate in global e-commerce without having to figure how to do things on their own.
According to Hamilton, small companies have participated in RosettaNet even though they barely have IT departments and transactional websites or critical business tools like ERP (enterprise resource plan). Hamilton also boasted how small member-companies deployed their RosettaNet-based supply chain only on desktop servers and only within six months from planning to implementation.
RosettaNet finds that over 60 percent of its implementation activities take place in Asia right now, where majority of the world’s supply chain activities originate, said S.Y. Foong, vice president of RosettaNet Asia. Hamilton said many companies initially focus on implementing order management before expanding to other e-business processes as more trading partners sign up for the service.
Among RosettaNet’s top implementors are Nokia, Intel and Sony. Nokia, which has to manage 100 billion parts a year and 10 million parts per hour, decided to use RosettaNet’s solution to automate its complex supply chain relationships.
Intel, on the other hand, is using RosettaNet to trade with 89 partners in 17 countries, while Sony implements RosettaNet for procurement, manufacturing, after-sales support and other processes.
Lito Zulaybar, executive director of RosettaNet Phils., said about 15 members have signified their participation in the consortium. Being a member allows Philippine companies to immediately transact with RosettaNet member-companies around the world.
"Our competitiveness is under siege so there’s no better time to do this than today," Zulaybar said. "We have in the country a strong manufacturing and export economy which is the key accelerator for e-business adoption."
RosettaNet, like the Rosetta Stone, is trying to break language barriers this time for e-business. Paul Tearnen, vice president for standards management of RosettaNet, explained that to establish the RosettaNet standards, they basically have to identify and set four things: their own PIP (partner interface processes), business dictionary, technical dictionary, and implementation framework.
"RosettaNet is really about a meaningful dialogue process and the sharing of common ways," said Tearnen. "It’s like putting up our own set of words, grammar and syntax together so companies can do meaningful work in a common e-business framework."