Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) held a conference devoted to its new e-trading floor; this can be found at http://www.mmk.ru/e-trade.wbp. This is part of the company’s development program based on the idea of being open and transparent. The e-trading floor means the enterprise has reached a new level of relationship with customers and suppliers. It took MMK, Cognitive Technologies, and Borlas eight months to launch the project in 2007. The program uses Oracle iStore, which makes it totally compatible with the entire Oracle E-Business Suite. When setting up this e-floor, MMK was trying to offer its customers a new kind of large-scale service, available online 24/7 and virtually anywhere. The enterprise guarantees the speediest possible shipment and delivery of all the orders placed, and our customers can track the process electronically whenever they want,’ MMK’s Corporate Improvements Director Vadim Feoktistov says.

The enterprise got over twenty e-customers in August and September 2007 and now expects to sell about 3% of its goods online. In the future, most of the paperwork is expected to be abandoned in favor of e-business and online auctions.