Meta-model for data harmonization and business process compliance in service procurement

Abstract

Diminished transaction costs, increased transparency and shortened procurement times entail increased importance of service e-procurement compared to traditional service procurement. Due to proprietary data exchange formats and individual business processes, data harmonization and business process compliance are shortcoming. In this paper a meta-model to formulate requirements of service procurement collaborations with a combined view on information and control flow is presented. Our focus is on two constituent elements of the model: collaborative business processes and service objects. Both elements define features which are characteristic for investigated value constellations. Challenge at hand is to implement standardized interfaces easing seamless exchange of information between business partners. Existing procurement systems need enhanced process-awareness and compliance with service-dominant-logic. The meta-model also serves as reference framework which identifies and correlates typical entities of service procurement collaborations. Furthermore a domain specific meta-model extension for industrial service procurement is derived. This extension serves as basis for data harmonization of service procurement data and enacts compliance of business processes in industrial service procurement collaborations. © 2012 International Federation for Information Processing.