Modelling a business to business intermediation platform

Abstract

Our proposition concerns an architectural model of a broker assisted, business to business e-commerce system. The presented brokerage platform is designed against business and technical requirements, within the transformational B2B landscape, which might push forward either centralised or proliferate, symbiotic brokerage models or even render them all invalid. In our paper, we merely elaborate on the design of a modular, scalable and extensible component-based brokerage system for complex, B2B services transactions. To this end, firstly, a particular conceptualization of a complex services transactions lifecycle is presented. Secondly, the functionality of the components comprising the designed brokerage platform is provided. Thirdly, the interactions among the identified components are given for indicative service procedures. The derived architectural model is proposed as applicable to various business domains in the aid of efficient business to business processes alignment. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers.