The standards bodies behind the two biggest electronic trading
formats have agreed to create a set of shared business processes
that could ultimately create a single global standard for
e-commerce.
The Accredited Standards Committee X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working
Group have announced plans to join the Electronic Business XML
(ebXML) initiative, which aims to establish a set of core
components for global business-process integration.
Business processes are functions that occur after data is exchanged
from company to company. To date, e-commerce players have focused
on companies' ability to talk with one another, but the electronic
data interchange (EDI) and ebXML bodies say they now hope to
standardise much of the way companies work with one another.
"I never understood the us-against-them assumptions," said David
Barkley, director of e-commerce relationships at home mortgage
provider Freddie Mac and chairman of ASC X12. "We need to
complement each other, not head off in different directions."
Ralph Berwanger is the ambassador for standards at e-commerce
network provider bTrade and a participant in both the ASC X12 and
ebXML standards bodies. He warned that unless EDI and ebXML can
find points of convergence, a new standard will develop during the
next 10 years and "we'll have to reinvent the wheel again".
By October, the EDI and ebXML standards groups plan to identify a
core set of business-process core components that can be
standardised. Berwanger noted that ASC X12 has 313 different
business-process messages, from invoices to health care claims to
requests for queries, that could be recast in ebXML.
Transportation, finance and other industry groups will work on
identifying key process issues that could then be folded into a set
of global core components, which will take about two years,
according to Berwanger.
"The key is that if you get the business processes defined, then
they can function separate from the syntax of the messages," he
said.
"Collaborative commerce is not going to work without something like
this," said Bob McCullough, an analyst at Hurwitz Group.
Kip Martin, an analyst at Meta Group, called business-process
definitions a way "to move beyond technology and get at the way
companies are run."
Martin also said that common ASC X12/ebXML processes would allow
companies to better tie together their legacy systems.
McCullough agreed. "Nobody would realistically replace their legacy
systems solely for the purpose of e-commerce, but they do need to
figure out a way of using those systems as technology continues to
change," he said.