See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264879945
THE ROLE OF STANDARDS IN B2B COMMUNICATION
Article
CITATIONS
READS
0
144
1 author:
Eva Söderström
University of Skövde
71 PUBLICATIONS 364 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Healthcare Informatics View project
Innoserve View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Eva Söderström on 04 December 2014.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2005
THE ROLE OF STANDARDS IN B2B COMMUNICATION
Eva Söderström
School of Humanities and Informatics, University of Skoevde
Box 408, 541 28 Skoevde, Sweden
ABSTRACT
Recent developments in e.g. Internet technology have brought new opportunities in how and with whom to do business.
Business-to-Business (B2B) is given much attention, and is expected to rise further in popularity. Integration between
B2B collaborators is most often undertaken using a B2B standard for the information exchanges. However, it is still
unclear what role these standards play in the interactions. This paper analyses four existing standards in order to establish
their respective roles. The results show that standards clearly cover different aspects, types, and levels of details of
business processes. The choice of standards is therefore complex and requires careful analysis and consideration
beforehand.
KEYWORDS
Business-to-Business, Standard, Communication.
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent technological developments have brought new opportunities in how and with whom to do business,
which requires solid business processes. This can be achieved through automation, such as automatic
responses to electronic customer orders, and automatic notifications of product information updates.
Automation removes much of the slow creation, handling, and distribution of business documents
(Premkumar et al, 1994; Chau and Hui, 2001). Part of making the business processes solid is to synchronise
and integrate them. Standardisation of processes and transactions is one approach, since co-operation is
simplified if the same types of standards are used (Emmerich et al, 1999; Burrows, 1999, Hasselbring, 2000;
Ghiladi, 2003). The setting of this paper is Business-to-Business (B2B), defined as: “…the use of the Internet
and Web-technologies for conducting inter-organizational business transactions” (Thompson and
Ranganathan, 2004). B2B organisations must form relationships with one another, and inter-organisational
systems help improve these links. Standards are a natural part of such systems (Soliman and Janz, 2004).
Even though standards are central to business communication, only little research has so far focused on
elaborating on what role standards may have therein. This paper will analyse four existing standards for B2B
with respect to their role in communication. We use a model of human-to-human (H2H) communication as
the basis of analysis. B2B is described in chapter 2, B2B standards in Chapter 3, and the four standards are
introduced in Chapter 4. The H2H model is introduced in Chapter 5, the comparison in Chapter 6, and
Chapter 7 concludes the paper with a discussion.
2. B2B STANDARDS
In this paper, a B2B standard is defined as: guidelines for how communication and information sent between
organisations should be structured and managed (Söderström, 2004). One common misunderstanding is that
standards are the same as the technology used. This is not the case. Instead, messages created based on the
guidelines of the standards are sent using the technology. The standard is thus the “glue” enabling alignment
and co-ordination of the communication. Standards differ in scope depending on type of information to
exchange. Some focus only on the structure and content of messages (document-centric), while others focus
439
ISBN: 972-8924-06-2 © 2005 IADIS
on entire processes for the communication (process-centric). The common language usually consists of either
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or the eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML). Standards are implemented
to facilitate inter-organisational communication and co-operation and make it possible to replace much
manual, paper-based communication with a more automated one. We will return to the communication focus
in the description of the H2H model and in the analysis.
3. FOUR B2B STANDARDS
The four standards were selected based on their widespread use and on their frequent appearance in scientific
papers. They are presented in alphabetic in order to avoid placing any weight of importance on either one.
The information is gathered from the respective standards homepage unless otherwise stated.
BizTalk: BizTalk aims to drive the adoption of XML in e-commerce and application integration. It has
three parts: BizTalk Server; BizTalk Framework; and BizTalk.org. The server provides a visual design
environment for business processes and a set of bindings to connect process definitions to technologies. The
BizTalk framework is an XML framework for application integration and e-commerce, and includes a
design framework for how to implement an XML schema and a set of XML tags used in messages sent
between applications. BizTalk.org is a community of standards users that provides resources for learning
about and using XML for EAI and B2B document exchange.
cXML: The aim of cXML is to facilitate the exchange of content and transaction information between
buyers and sellers, via a protocol for consistent communication of business documents between procurement
applications, e-commerce hubs and suppliers. cXML is a set of XML protocols. More precisely, it is an
XML-based infrastructure for standardising electronic exchange, updating, supply and control of catalogue
content and e-commerce transactions.
ebXML: ebXML is a modular suite of specifications for conducting business over the Internet.
Specifications provide a standard method for business message exchange, trading relationships, data
communication in common terms, and storage of business processes in public repositories. ebXML consists
of: An infrastructure; a semantic framework; and a discovery mechanism. The infrastructure helps ensuring
inter-operability through a standard message transport mechanism, and a business service interface for
handling messages. The semantic framework containing a meta- model for defining business process and
information models, a set of reusable core components that reflect business semantics and the XML
vocabulary, and a process for defining message structures and definitions related to the business process
model. The discovery mechanism allows organisations to find each other, agree on relationships, and
conduct business.
RosettaNet: The aim of RosettaNet is to establish standard processes for electronic sharing of business
information. The focus is on business vocabularies, message wrapping and transportation, and business
processes for information exchange. RosettaNet contains the following parts: XML; Dictionaries; Partner
Interface Processes (PIPs); and RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF). There are two dictionaries:
a business dictionary with properties for defining business transactions between trading partners, and a
technical dictionary with properties for defining products and services. PIPs specify the standard content and
format for sending and receiving messages. Lastly, RNIF provides exchange protocols for RosettaNet
standards implementation, specifying information exchange between trading-partner servers using XML,
covering the transport, routing and packaging; security; signals; and trading partner agreement.
4. MODEL OF HUMAN-TO-HUMAN COMMUNICATION
Organisational process-to-process (P2P) communication can be compared to human-to-human (H2H)
communication. This does not imply that organisations can or must conform to the shape of human
communication, but enables an initial understanding of the role standards play in business communication.
We base our comparison on the work by O’Sullivan and Whitecar (2000), who used this approach when
looking at the RosettaNet standard. This paper expands their analysis by adding three other standards.
The H2H communication model (figure 2) is constructed from an organisational communication
perspective, since the highest level is the business process. Since B2B standards are used in organisations,
440
IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2005
the model is thus relevant for comparison. The most basic part of H2H communication is sounds. The
combination of sounds is used to make up letters in the alphabet. These letters can be combined to form
words. Words are combined into sentences using grammatical rules in order to e.g. describe and discuss
phenomena that exist in the world. Sentences are used in dialogues between humans, and are the basis of
business processes and the work performed therein.
Business
process
DIALOGUE
Grammar
Words
Alphabet
Sound
Figure 2. Human-to-Human communication (adapted from O’Sullivan and Whitecar, 2000)
Business processes may contain multiple, or sets of, dialogues. One difference between business and
human communication concerns the type of actors in communication, since actors in business
communication need not only be human, but can be systems or applications as well.
5. THE H2H MODEL VS. B2B STANDARDS
Just as dialogue is at the centre of attention in the human-to-human model, standards are the focus of
standards-based P2P communication (figure 3). Several references to the example standards will be made to
exemplifying the correspondences, and figure 4 illustrates how each of these standards relate to P2P.
Standards are exchangeable with dialogue, since they enable and are part of e-business processes. Existing
standards vary in naming and level of detail. For example, BizTalk and ebXML use “Messages” to denote
dialogue, while RosettaNet has its PIPs at the same level, and cXML its Business documents. This indicates
differences in level of detail, since a business document may imply more high-level and general information
than a message. One commonality is that all standards deal with some type of written business information,
where the senders and receivers are business processes. However, BizTalk and cXML are document-centric
standards, while RosettaNet and ebXML are process-centric standards.
e-Business
process
Business
Process
STANDARD
Business
Process
Models
Definitions
XML or EDI
Internet
Figure 3. Process-to-Process communication (inspired by O’Sullivan and Whitecar, 2000)
A standard is made up of different models that can be graphical, textual, etc. Examples are XML schemas
(BizTalk), protocols (cXML), and frameworks (RosettaNet). All standards have a set of rules for how to
structure either just the messages, or both them and the processes. Before model construction, definitions of
concepts must be known. It must be clear what the message means. Our standards describe this in different
441
ISBN: 972-8924-06-2 © 2005 IADIS
ways, for example: BizTalk: defines XML tags similar to word construction, ebXML: defines concepts that
refer or correspond to words, and RosettaNet: provides dictionaries of word definitions. Concepts can be
defined using a common alphabet. This is essential for achieving inter-operability. In B2B standards, the
alphabet is either XML or EDI. The most basic means through which standards-based communication takes
place is Internet technology, corresponding to sound in H2H communication.
e-Business
process
BP
MESSAGE
e-Business
process
BP
BP
BUSINESS
DOCUMENT
e-Business
process
BP
BP
MESSAGE
e-Business
process
BP BP
PIP
Schema
Protocol
Meta-Model
Framework
Tags
Content
Concepts
Dictionary
XML
XML
XML
XML
Internet
Internet
Internet
Internet
cXML
ebXML
RosettaNet
BizTalk
BP
Figure 4. Human-to-human model versus four B2B example standards
A summary of the comparison is presented in Table 1, outlining similarities and differences for each
aspect. All standards use the same naming for e-business processes. They also differ in process coverage,
since they are either document-centric or process-centric. The two process-centric standards differ between
them, in what type of processes they cover. RosettaNet focuses on a few industry branches, while ebXML
takes a more general approach. All four standards deal with exchange of written business information, but
differ in their naming convention. The same differences in processes as with e-business apply here as well.
Table 1. Comparison summary
Human-tohuman
Business
process
Dialogue
Process-toprocess
e-business
process
Standard
Similarities
Differences
Naming
Process coverage
Types of processes
Naming of concepts
Process coverage
Naming
Concept content
Naming
Concept content
Support for one or multiple words
None
None
Grammar
Models
Transportation of written business
information
Some rules are provided
Words
Definitions
Support for words exist
Alphabet
Sound
XML or EDI
Internet
All use XML
All use Internet technology
In grammar, all standards provide some rules for how to combine “words into sentences”, even though
the approaches and names differ. For example, BizTalk: XML schemas, cXML: communication protocols,
ebXML: an inter-operability meta-model, and RosettaNet: a communication framework. The exact contents
of the concepts differ, and rules are thus provided in different ways. The same applies to words, where all
standards have some support. Differences are naming, concept content, and support of either single (BizTalk
– tags, ebXML – concepts) or multiple words (cXML – document content, RosettaNet – dictionaries). All
standards are alike in alphabet and sound, since all use XML and internet technology.
442
IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2005
6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The focus of the paper was to analyse four B2B standards with respect to their role in communication we
discussed. Results showed that the standards cover different aspects, types, and levels of details of business
processes. Even though several of them deal with e.g. information sharing, they do so in different ways. The
comparison provides an insight into how much and what parts of an organisation that will be affected using a
standard. The differences call for a thorough analysis of standards content, to enable better decision-making
about standards, as well as for an analysis on what organisations themselves want to standardise – which will
affect their standards choice. In the long run, it will not be enough to scratch the surface of standards. Future
research will focus on providing organisations with a tool for comparing standards.
REFERENCES
BizTalk: www.biztalk.org
Burrows, J. (1999), Information Technology standards in a changing world: the role of the users, Computer Standards &
Interfaces, pp.323-331, Elsevier Science B.V.
Chau, P. and Hui, K. (2001), Determinants of Small Business EDI Adoption: An Empirical Investigation, Journal of
Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 11 (4), pp.229-252
cXML: www.cxml.org
ebXML: www.ebxml.org
Emmerich, W., Finkelstein, A., Fuggetta, A., Montangero, C. and Derniame, J.-C. (1999), “Software Process - Standards,
Assessments and Improvement”, in: Derniame, J.-C., Badara Kaba, A. and Wastell, D. (eds.), Software Process:
Principles, Methodology, Technology, pp.15-25. Springer Verlag
Ghiladi, V. (2003), The Importance of International Standards for Globally Operating Businesses, International Journal of
IT Standards & Standardization Research, Vol.1, No.1, January – June 2003, pp.54-56, Idea Group Publishing
Hasselbring, W. (2000), Information System Integration, Communications of the ACM, June 2000, vol.43, no.6, pp.3338
O’Sullivan and Whitecar (2000), Implementing an Industry e-Business Initiative: Getting to RosettaNet, Intel
Technology Journal, 1st quarter, February 3, 2000
Premkumar, G., Ramamurthy, K. and Nilakanta, S. (1994), Implementation of Electronic Data Interchange: An
Innovation Diffusion Perspective, Journal of Management Information Systems, Fall 1994, Vol.11, No.2, pp.157-186
RosettaNet: www.rosettanet.org
Söderström, E. (2004), B2B Standards Implementation: Issues and Solutions, PhD Thesis, Department of Computer and
Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Akademitryck, ISBN 91-7265-942-4
Soliman, K. and Janz, B. (2004), An exploratory study to identify the critical factors affecting the decision to establish
Internet-based inter-organisational information systems, Information & Management, 41 (2004), pp.697-706
Thompson, T. and Ranganathan, C. (2004), Adopters and non-adopters of business-to-business electronic commerce in
Singapore, Information & Management, In press
443
View publication stats