Service Providers in Electronic Markets —

Contrary to the recent emphasis upon the "Information Highway", the situation for one of the most predestined service providers, the printing and publishing industry, remains quite unchanged. Despite the decrease in prices for hard-and software, most companies operate with increasing costs in the field of information technology.[1] The existence of antiquated and centralized information systems with a diversity of different operating systems and applications, the high cost of technological innovations, the fast progress and change of the basic technologies are further reasons for operative problems as well as hindering the strategic transformation into electronic service providers. In order to handle those increasing demands more and more alternative technological and organizational concepts are being discussed.[2] In this context the printing and publishing industry now has to deal with three major questions. First, while a company alone cannot provide the necessary applications and data integration, outsourcing is widely discussed as an alternative. Empirical research investigates the possibilities of outsourcing in a number of German companies that have independent editorial offices in this business. Secondly, in-house integration of modern information technologies based on open, distributed systems is needed to stimulate the transformation of the organization and the establishment of specific information management in order to avoid the problems with pure external outsourcing. The Media-Management-Center (MMC) is proposed as an organizational solution for these tasks. Thirdly, on the basis of these operative solutions the strategic transformation into a Service Providers in Electronic Markets-2-service provider in electronic markets ("News-Broker") can be realized. This strategic aim can be achieved with the advent "agent" technology. Outsourcing means the partitial or total and the temporary or countinuous transfer of worktasks of information processing to a third party. The third party can be an internally or an outside company. The first case will be called "inhouse" or "internal outsourcing", the second will be called "external outsourcing" or simply "outsourcing".[3] To test the importance of outsourcing 14 German companies in the printing and publishing industry were asked with a standardized questionnaire of 40 questions.[4] The aim of this empirical survey was to evaluate the possible applications in this industrial branch and the possible strategies for the development of the information management in general. The first result of this investigation was, that the general advantages of outsourcing were seen as a more effective way of controlling costs such as offering the possiblitiy to reduce the cost of employees.[5] The controlling of …