New framework for Interoperability

摘要

For many years, large organisations have been exchanging electronic business documents such as purchase orders, shipping notifications, and invoices using EDI and, more recently, XML technology. Because the electronic documents are exchanged machine-to-machine, organisations make savings through improved efficiency such as no re-keying of data and reduced errors as keying mistakes can lead to shipping the wrong part. Despite being used for more than 20 years, electronic business document exchange has so far been limited to larger organisations in a few industry sectors such as automotive and retail. But if this automation is such a good thing, then why aren't more businesses participating? The answer is simply that, for two businesses to automate a collaborative process, the cost of setting up the automation needs to be less than the benefit that is gained. The reality today is that the set-up cost is prohibitive except for high volume/high value processes between large organisations.