B2B Processing Essentials Tutorial

Agree to B2B specifications

Essential #6

Implementing B2B requires that you and your partners jointly agree to the process, vocabulary, and technical specifications. 

It is in this phase that the process workflow, business decisions and exceptions must be clearly defined.

For each business document, create a detailed specification defining the exact type of business information to be exchanged.

This is why the business document standards are so helpful!

Public Process and Document

For each business document, partners will specify the following information:

Company and product identifiers

Exact business information to be exchanged (terms and definitions)

Required versus optional data

Code lists and the business meaning of the status codes

Procedures for handling data errors

Technical format for the business document

Private Process and Document

After the public document is finalized, identify the internal data and format.  In this step, the private vocabulary is mapped to the public standard.  To automate the B2B processing, compare and link (map) each data element in the public document to the internal vocabulary used by the business application.

Mapping files are created using this data comparison.

The B2B gateway uses the mapping files to automatically translate the data in the business documents between the public and private formats.

The actual business data does not change... only the data labels and the technical format are changed.