The Doctor at Sourcing Innovation created another cross-blog series, asking a number of us to give our Seven Grand Challenges for Supply and Spend Management. Some insightful posts have already tackled topics like spend data, currency, trade barriers and supply chain risks. But rather than echoing their lists, which I believe are largely right on the money, I wanted to cover another challenge that I think will require a significant shift in the way buyers and suppliers do business in an increasingly connected world - that of Web 3.0 and beyond.

We’ve been inundated with talk about Web 2.0 giving everyone a voice. The speculation on where that will evolve when “Web 3.0″ takes hold is a world where individuals will make decisions on purchases, news sources, travel, jobs and anything else based on the recommendations and input of their personal and professional connections. The start of this was Facebook’s much maligned “beacon” that automatically alerted a user’s networks to their online purchases…including the engagement rings and Christmas presents they hadn’t yet received. Oops.

That setback won’t hold back progress forever and it would be naive to think this evolution won’t touch the B2B world. It’s obviously difficult to envision exactly how the medium will look from a UI or feature/function standpoint on the 30 year time frame The Doctor asked us to do here. But I think it’s safe to say that finding potential suppliers will be easier via powerful discovery tools and networks. And more importantly, there will be a great deal of visibility into how both buyers and suppliers do business. In a sense, the world is growing and shrinking at the same time.

So, what does that mean for buyers and suppliers?

As buyers and suppliers become increasingly networked, their performance, pricing, quality and many other attributes that impacts their business relationships will become increasingly visible to the world. Does the vendor deliver on time? What’s their quality like? Are they easy to work with on collaborative development efforts? This may or may not become a “productized” reality - a virtual eBay feedback mechanism for businesses. But even if it does not, supplier networks, search engines and even LinkedIn’s 3-degrees-of-separation will increasingly put customers and prospects in touch with one another.

As for suppliers…they’ll have a greater ability to evaluate their buyers and potential customers. Are they easy to work with? Do they pay their bills on time? Smart buying organizations have been expressing how important it is for them to become the “buyer of choice” for their suppliers. They want to be better customers, so they can reap the collaborative advantages and preferential treatment bestowed on the favorite customer. In the future, their current and potential suppliers may be able to learn more about how those buyers behave from one another. In other words, they may not have to learn the hard (or hopefully easy) way how their relationship will unfold if they can get feedback from their peers.

So, where’s the challenge? Well, if you are business that provides great visibility and communicates quickly and effectively, you should adapt to this changing world fairly easily. But I think the challenges most companies have faced in their efforts to join the “social” web world we have today shows they’ll be even more challenged at the volume and importance customers and prospects discussing them takes hold.

Realistically, this new world provides tremendous opportunity for buyers and suppliers who embrace discovery and discussion. But one company’s opportunity is another company’s challenge. And for those companies that fail to adapt to increasingly connected world, the challenge may be staying afloat.

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.

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