Project: Cloud based Cross Organisation Collaboration Enhancing multi-level Sales Processes
Initial Situation_x000D_The majority of manufacturers in the industrial goods industry especially in Europe are medium sized enterprises generating about 3.1 Million € sales on average [Eurostat]. However, 50% of European companies in that industry have less than 250 employees. General export quota of 70%-80% worldwide and 50% within Europe are not a rarity. To achieve a crucial share in global markets in particular for SMEs collaborations with local dealers are necessary. Using this distribution channel, manufacturing SMEs are actively present in 80 or more countries. On the other site local dealers, which are often SMEs, are also depending on close collaboration with several manufacturing companies, which ask for different market demands using different applications and forms and sharing information via different channels._x000D_To ensure global success the manufacturers and dealers have to overcome information barriers, to cooperate closely together and sharing essential market information like customer needs, local market information, success stories, competitor landscape and a lot more. The need for close cooperation will even increase by the need of short innovation cycles in global competition. Manufacturers need information about trends and innovation demands from the markets. Dealers need marketing and qualifying material in order to be able to sell innovations. _x000D_Objective_x000D_The major objective of COCoS is to support the multi stage sales process of manufacturers and dealers by providing innovative services which enhance the success of both in global markets via sharing relevant market information and collaborating within different types of business communities (cf. Fig1 in Appendix A). To achieve this, within COCoS a framework based on state of the art technologies will be developed which enables dealers and manufactures to start and/or join business communities in order to collaborate and share information in compliance with their legal independencies and business objectives. In addition customers will get the opportunity to start and join open forums and blogs. _x000D__x000D_Business communities_x000D_COCoS will provide a system to build and COtain communities for cross-enterprise collaboration enabling manufacturers and dealers using these for different purposes:_x000D__x000D_1. MDC Manufacturer-dealers-community enabling collaboration within a sales organization, one manufacturer with many dealers. _x000D_The CO focus of this community type is the information transparency of manufacturers about marketing measures and business opportunities in a targeted information exchange with specific dealers. All information from dealers will be automatically aggregated via COCoS Services and integrated in a sales support system of the manufacturer. To do this, a COCoS meta-model will be developed. Within this model a sales ontology will be designed and market relevant content and types of information will be differentiated. (e.g. type: sales opportunity; value: due date). This meta-model will be included in a COCoS mediation service that shall be able to aggregate information of the same object from different dealers in a COCoS multi stage sales collaboration framework. _x000D__x000D_2. DMC Dealer-manufacturers-community: Collaboration of one dealer with many manufacturers. Lintera, a P of COCoS is selling products for about 20 manufacturers to its markets. This type of community shall support dealers like Lintera to aggregate marketing and sales information from different manufacturers and push or provide information to specific manufacturers. So a dealer has very low efforts in being participant in several MDCs. Additionally, by opening a DMC the dealer gets the opportunity to use the platform for the support of its own sales processes. T he COCoS platform will take care that the right information will be exchanged with the right manufacturer at the right time using the COCoS semantic layer._x000D__x000D_Each type of community allows the communication and collaboration of one with many, e.g. one manufacturer with many dealers or one dealer with many manufacturers, but additionally a 1:1 scenario like one manufacturer to one dealer or vice versa._x000D_Additionally a administrative console will be introduced to allow establishing and management of communities. All communities described above are based on a open community only narrowing down the amount and types of users._x000D_In order to use all relevant information of communities for market analyses, market segmentation and innovation potential analyses and information analyses service will be developed which is able to gather information from all communities someone is participating in. An adjustable semantic search function will be designed within in COCoS which aims at providing the right information in contexts of innovation processes.
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Acronym
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COCoS
(Reference Number: 5486)
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Duration
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01/07/2010 - 31/12/2012
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Project Topic
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To support global market success COCoS overcomes information barriers between manufacturers, dealers and customers by developing a meta-model and mediated services (SaaS) to create and access multi-level communities in order to collaborate and share market information
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Network
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Eurostars
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Call
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Eurostars Cut-Off 4
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Project partner
