Generic Process Models for e-Business Transactions in Heterogeneous Systems

Research seems to have dealt with the problem of interoperability in various business domains, however the issue of interoperability in heterogeneous business domains – Enterprises, Governmental and Banking Institutions of different countries (cross-border) or Enterprises of different interests (cross-sector) remains still a big challenge to be tackled. This paper presents generic models of the most common business transactions carried out mainly by Small and Medium Enterprises. These models are constructed using state-of-the art notations ans methodologies which facilitate the Application-to-Application interconnection and the automated business documents exchange between enterprises, governmental and banking institutions. Those models cover not only national or sector specific business domain transactions but also cross-border and cross-sector processes, which imply different requirements as apart from the differences in the execution way, different legal rules and data entities, are also present. The modelling methodology is briefly presented, a complete list of the examined transactions (like Invoicing, VAT Statement, Fund Transfer) and the most important generic models are presented, followed by a complete comparison between the findings regarding each sector.