Chemical Exchange Directory — advertising chemicals online

This paper discusses the development and implementation of Chemical Exchange Directory (CED), an online advertising service for the chemical industry. One of the major problems in the chemical market is the identification of viable suppliers for products in a rapidly expanding market with large numbers of products, each with many different potential applications. CED has been designed by chemical industry personnel to be used by people with little data processing training; there are no complex search languages and procedures. Data input and output are facilitated by using a simple datasheet format to define each product. Information providers supply and modify product information online. Uniform transaction pricing has been adopted to follow industry control procedures. The service is the forerunner of other online business applications in the chemical industry.