The Big Question: B2B marketplaces will worsen skills crisis

NEWS Business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces will give companies and IT departments serious problems and exacerbate the current skills crisis. These are the thoughts of Richard Sykes, chairman at Morgan Chambers, one of the guests in this week's Big Question: "E-marketplaces: What's the catch?" Sykes said: "They're part of life's mix. They're real, they're young, they're new." Sykes went on to warn that there will be problems in implementation before success can be achieved. He said: "We're going to have some bloody miserable experiences, there's going to be some disasters, some terrible stories and we'll climb a learning curve. In five years' time they'll be a natural part of the mix - people will use them for some things and not for others. Let's enjoy the learning curve and hope that the disasters that come out of it are not too terrible." But Cindy Dahm, marketing director at phone.com, a provider of web-based services for mobile phone users, said the biggest problem would be finding the workers with the necessary skills. She said: "I think one of the challenges with B2B marketplaces is there are not enough [people] who know how to create those marketplaces and make them work well. Businesses have a challenge finding all those people because the skills are very concentrated right now." You can see the entire Big Question programme in the Ecommerce Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a38710 ).