The CIO of the one of the nation's largest discount merchandisers is calling on the major online retail exchanges, which aspire to provide everything from auctions to collaborative sales forecasting, to combine and improve their performance as a result.

Signifying growing frustration with the exchanges' failures to justify the investments made in them, Target's CIO Paul Singer says the retail industry simply can't afford to support multiple exchanges. Given the tough economy, manufacturers and retailers are under pressure to cut administration costs, eliminate stocking errors and dramatically speed the time it takes to get new products onto the shelves.

"There's a lot of money being spent in three different areas with three different exchanges. The industry can't support three," said Singer, at the Retail Systems technology show in Chicago. Singer's sentiment was first expressed by another Target executive, Vice Chairman Gerry Storch, at that same show a year ago. "They should get together," Singer added.

Impatient corporations have spent tens and hundreds of millions of dollars on the formation of these marketplaces. And despite the promise of "friction-free'' transactions, the idea of using the Internet to create seamless, efficient sales among businesses has sputtered. Covisint, a high-profile exchange for automakers and their suppliers, last month replaced chairman Kevin English, installed new managers, cut jobs and scaled back the sweep of its operations. Now, the squeeze may be on for Trans-ora—a well-funded exchange backed by consumer packaged goods com- panies such as Sara Lee, Wm. Wrigley Jr., Kellogg's and Hershey Foods, firms that represent more than $600 billion in annual sales.

The pressure is on for Transora and other exchanges to collaborate with their competitors, under the watch of federal regulators. Orbitz, a travel Web site owned by five big airlines, is still being closely eyed by the Departments of Transportation and Justice, for instance.

Target's push is being joined by Procter & Gamble, whose director of global customer e-business, Milan Turk Jr., points out that half of all electronic orders processed by P&G contain faulty data and require manual correction, lengthening the time it takes to stock Procter & Gamble products onto the shelves of retailers like Target.