Collaborative Commerce based on XML
In the network economy, it is only by optimizing business
processes that costs can be reduced. Here, though, the emphasis is on
processes that involve multiple companies.
Nearly one million California taxpayers remit Sales and Use Taxes
to the California State Board of Equalization (BOE),which has its
headquarters in Sacramento. Within the past fiscal year, the BOE had
Sales and Use Tax receipts of more than $33 billion. In connection
with these payments, taxpayers and the BOE sent and received over 3
million tax returns.
In an effort to improve taxpayer services and tax return processing
efficiency, the BOE implemented an Electronic Return Filing (e-filing)
program. As John Hamlin, Technical Project Manager of BOE 's e-filing
project, explains:" The first step has been to develop an
e-filing program that allows eligible taxpayers to use private service
providers to file their tax return online. The service providers
collect and verify the taxpayers 'data, then transmit the data via the
Internet to the BOE."
This real-time interchange of information uses Extensible Markup
Language (XML)and is stored in Software AG 's Tamino XML Database.
Hamlin points out that "XML is becoming the accepted standard for
electronic data interchange via the Internet. "He continues,
"The electronic interchange of information with taxpayers, other
government entities, and external partners has become very important
to us. The Internet and XML technology offer the ideal basis for this
type of electronic collaboration."
No E without C
The growing importance of increased collaboration and closer ties
-both between companies and between companies and the authorities -has
inevitably affected information technology within organizations. The
traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) model is becoming
dated. And while classical accounting and production systems have
brought enormous benefits in recent years in terms of optimization and
automation of internal processes, and thus increased productivity, the
economic climate is changing.
As the e-business trend demonstrates: almost all companies have
developed a strategy for the electronic implementation of business
processes. At this stage of the e-revolution, organizations are
building on solutions for electronic commerce and optimal supply chain
management that support communication between companies. The task at
hand now is to integrate these processes and the systems involved in
order to facilitate extensive collaboration between the companies
participating in a project: this is what is meant by collaborative
commerce.
So the term describes cooperation between companies or, as the BOE
example shows, between companies and authorities via the Internet.
However, the scope of collaborative commerce clearly goes far beyond
the familiar models of supply chain management, which are similarly
used to map value-added chains. Although collaborative commerce
solutions are intended as trading platforms for the purchase and sale
of goods and services, they also provide Internet- based cooperation
models in areas such as product development, manufacturing, design and
resource management. The old-style chain, in which information flowed
in one direction, has developed into a network in which cooperation
partners exchange information flexibly in all directions.
Collaboration requires optimal information exchange
Good teamwork requires that the participants comprehend each other
and have a common understanding of what they are doing. In
collaborative commerce, this means that all participants in the
process can communicate seamlessly and flexibly with each other and
that the process itself is standardized. All partners need to be
integrated at process level. A simple example is the generation of
invoices for an online store. When customers make purchases in an
online store, the inventory management system in the store 's
back-office compiles the invoice and prints it out. The system then
forwards the data to the logistics service provider.
In the event that only some of the goods are available in the
warehouse, or that certain products can only be delivered in a
different model, the invoice has to be corrected. The logistics
service provider returns the relevant information, but executes the
rest of the order. Collaborative commerce in this simple scenario
requires the appropriate communication facilities, a standardized,
fully detailed process and the definition of the role of the
individual participants in this process. How- ever, this task becomes
more demanding if multiple, changing partners are participating in the
process and if the complexity of the process increases. For example,
the development of a new product often requires the exchange of
extensive CAD data. Collaborative commerce provides the platform on
which different partners can work together on a project.
Interface crunch: XML is the answer
On a technical level, collaborative commerce needs solutions in
which the different systems can be integrated seamlessly, which are
based on open standards and permit the interchange of different types
of data." XML is the key technology for these tasks,"
explains Dr.Peter Mossack, VP of Research and Development at Software
AG." As a meta language, XML makes it possible to include
semantic information with data. This allows applications to
'understand ' and process data from other applications." This
eliminates the need for costly conversion of the data from one format
into another and onerous interface programming work. XML permits in-
formation flow with no media breaks. "In addition, XML provides
the necessary openness and does not commit users to a proprietary
technology," adds Mossack.
XML facilitates the inter- change of information in different data
formats, meaning that besides figures and text, applications can
handle graphics, CAD data and multimedia files from other applications
without any problem. Standards for cross-company communication can be
developed on the basis of XML. The lingua franca of the Internet
thereby allows companies to develop business processes that penetrate
company boundaries and work flexibly with different business partners.
Collaboration determines the competition
XML technology and innovative solutions are already able to fulfill
the technical conditions for collaboration over the Internet. For
companies, it is now a question of identifying the relevant
cooperation partners and defining the right processes for successful
collaboration. This demands entrepreneurial spirit and courage,
because waiting until the right course has been identified for you may
save money, but will mean the loss of the competitive edge in the
network economy.
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