Heterogeneous Domains’ e-Business Transactions Interoperability with the use of Generic Process Models

Abstract

Interoperability is the key factor which will drive e-Business to the next level by offering fully automated transactions among Enterprise Applications, such as Enterprise Resource Planning or Supply Chain Management systems. Nowadays, 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. 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 and methodologies which facilitate the Application-to-Application interconnection and the automated business documents exchange between enterprises, governmental and banking institutions, covering 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.