Vamedis: Bringing the Old World into the New Economy
Executive Summary
Just when you thought the party's over in Internet-enabled e-commerce, Vamedis is staking a claim for leadership in Europe's B2B supply chain space. Over the past year, the European marketplace hasn't been much friendlier to dot-coms, particularly B2Bs, than the US marketplace has been. But far from a venture-backed start-up, Vamedis is banking on leveraging the entrenched market positions of seven of Europe's leading hospital supply companies.
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Combining the benefits of a disciplined hospital system and a leader in e-commerce, the new joint venture between Tenet and Chemdex hopes to create a differentiated offering in e-health. The new company has the ability to integrate the hospitals and suppliers Tenet/BuyPower represents, thus providing the critical mass that e-commerce companies have, until now, lacked. But company officials insist that their real advantage is that they offer a different approach to e-commerce, one that focuses on an end-to-end solution tied to the hospital's ERP system, rather than simply a web site to make ordering and inventory management more efficient.