Integrating workflow management systems with business-to-business interaction standards

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is emerging as a new market with tremendous potential. Organizations are trying to link services across organizational boundaries in order to electronically trade goods and services. Standards such as RosettaNet, CBL, ED1, OB1, and cXML, describe how electronic B2B interactions should be carried on so that dynamic trade partnerships can be established and transactions can be executed across organizations. While the development of standards is a fundamental step towards enabling e-business, the problem of linking B2B interactions with internal business processes is still a challenge. In addition, as the industry standards evolve continuously based on changing needs, organizations have to adopt new standards quickly. In this paper we describe how workflow technology can be extended in order to support B2B interactions and to link them with the internal workflows. The proposed framework can be used to speed up both the development of new business processes that support B2B interaction standards and the enhancement of the existing business processes by the addition of B2B interaction capability.