The research Report on eBusiness for April 2001 shows that business-to-business (B2B) online buying of indirect materials continues to increase. The report shows that the number of organizations purchasing indirect materials increased to 71%. That's a sharp increase from 61% reported in the January 2001 report. On average, these online buyers made 9% of their total purchases over the Internet.

While purchasers increasingly buy online, more than half of the 407 manufacturing and non-manufacturing respondents to a survey by the National Association of Purchasing Management and Forrester Research, Inc., believe that they are in the earliest stages of adopting online buying. For more information, visit www.napm.org or www.forrester.com .