West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace, WMCCM, is a free online meeting and collaboration place for all Businesses in the West Midlands. Established in 2002 and Operated by the WMG at the University of Warwick and using European ERDF funding, WMCCM provides SMEs with advanced e-business tools, capability and support at no cost.

• Access New Business

Based on what you can do, not just what you do now. Select opportunities from leads fed
into the system and create your own tenders.

• Form New Partnerships

Find capable partners to help undertake new projects and to bring together additional skills.

• Sustain that Business

Create online secure collaboration spaces to support communication with partners, suppliers and customers.

WMCCM has engaged significantly with business and business projects. It has over 8000 organisations registered with it through its website which attracts over 12000 visitors a week to use the information on it. It has visited and improved the operations of 385 established businesses and brought £5.5 million of verified new sales to them. WMCCM has engaged with over 25 regional, national and international organisations that offer business support and research.

Diverse Function for Different Clients

• For Buyers: Find new suppliers; match your process & skills needs; publish your work as tenders (publish your requirements to all; publish to private supply chains).
• For Suppliers: Find new business; search for subcontractors; use project spaces to deliver; view our on-line catalogues and etc.
• Tools for Networking: Clusters for collaboration; our members showcases (discussions/tasks/contacts; E-Commerce portals and guidance; supply chain visibility module)
• Help diverse clients to win better business

WMCCM Services & Objectives

• Access New Business Opportunities… based on what you can do, not just what you do now. Select opportunities from tenders fed into the system.
• Form New Partnerships… to help address new opportunities. Use our unique competency profiling technique and functionality to create new capability and undertake higher value jobs.
• Sustain that Business… create on-line secure project spaces to support collaboration and delivery.
• Access to new orders via our tender matching service e.g. Custom manufactured parts & OJEU Tenders
• Qualified information about possible business partners through our unique Competence Profiling
• On-line collaboration spaces, making communication and project management with partners easy and efficient.
• Increase sales and reduced costs via using electronic collaboration tools.

Key Service of WMCCM:

• Company Search
  You can find a company from over 9,000 (currently) registered companies. Search by location, process and skill, to find matching companies that are fully Competence Profiled.
• Competence Profiling Service
  This service is based on understanding and categorizing the processes and skills of an individual SME. This profile information is independently captured and approved by WMCCM staff.
• Project Collaboration Capability
  This allows companies to collaborate on projects, by creating a secure online folder featuring, document, task, contacts, and discussion and web site content spaces. This secure space is only visible to users approved by the originator.
• Marketplace Capability
  A feed of tenders from a number of sources is provided. A profile of the type of work being sought can be created, this will automatically notify by email when a suitable tender is identified. Tenders can be generated and placed on the system by profiled members to identify suppliers.
• Clustering Capability
  Communities of interest relevant to different clusters of companies can be created and managed by approved users. For an example cluster space see Ready for Business and looking at the 2012 opportunities.
• Catalogue Capability
  A catalogue capability is provided for our profiled SMEs wishing to "showcase" example products, and for approved suppliers wishing to make their goods or services available to the WMCCM community.

Key Objectives of WMCCM:

• Show the capabilities of the regions companies to the wider world.
• Lower transaction costs through electronic communication.
• Provide improved access to existing and new market opportunities.
• Enhance collaboration to generate new opportunities.

WMCCM Miracle and Future

The West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace (WMCCM) will host more SME companies, and help them find new business, find partners to undertake work and provides virtual filing cabinets to enable the work at low cost. Also it will continue with other applications, including Gateway Asia, a platform to help link UK SMEs with companies in China, India and Malaysia; a student-centered course management platform and an EU FP7 research coordination platform for the European Plastics Industry. The WMCCM work will lead onto building a worldwide platform for SME support, linking capability with opportunities and improved market access.

For more details please go to wmccm