B2B Primer
Who defines B2B standards?
B2B advocates with business and technical experts from many companies work together in standards organizations to define, publish and test B2B standards. Standards The official B2B standards are published by government-sanctioned groups International organizations whose members are listed as countries, such as ISO and the United Nations. Country-sponsored standards organizations, such as ANSI. Most B2B standards organizations are created by a group of companies working as a community to apply the official standards for efficient eBusiness such as OASIS and RosettaNet. Standards groups are non-profit organizations. They provide community governance so volunteers from many companies can work together. These organizations manage all the operational work to create, publish and maintain standards, specifications and implementation guides. Common Practices In addition to the official standards and community specifications, B2B processing may include common practices that are defined for an individual B2B processing network… perhaps a large customer establishes specific rules (“standards”) for conducting business. These community specifications define additional common practices that become necessary to follow. Proprietary B2B processing rules created by a company for their unique needs are considered proprietary (not standard). These unique B2B practices may add value to the B2B processing community by offering special services. Often, proprietary practices add extra effort for everyone, as they must adapt to the unique data or processing rules. | 
