RE: What do people really expect from ebXML? Answer: Saving theEarth??

["Champion, Jean-Luc" <jchampion@netfish.com>]

Hi there,

Of course we would be happy to be Savers of the Earth and the Universe
but, thanks to Freddy Mercury, didn't Flash Gordon already take this job ?
:-0

Anyway I would add my 2 Euro's to this discussion.

David wrote : "Last week, I was delivered a parcel, and signed for it
on a digital touchpad."

Let's try to analyze this short sentence on a B2B point-of-vue.
How will a computer understand what "last week" is ?
There are a lot of means to represent this concept depending where
you're living. But at the end, it's still a date or a period of time.

"delivered" implies
- that a complete delivery address has been provided to the seller before
all,
- that the seller has given the said address to a logistic center,
- that this same address has been sent to a carrier,
- that Customs have been notified about the actual value of the content of
the parcel,
- that an invoice has been issued and sent to an invoicing address,
- that an account has been debited and credited in accounting packages,
- ...
and I certainly forget a lot of other actions triggered by the word
"delivered".

"a parcel" :
- how will this parcel be referenced in purchasing : AWB number, parcel
number,
product ID, EAN number, ... ? 
- even for SME's or artisans, the parcel and products which are contained
need
to be introduced in an inventory report. What product reference will be used
?
- how is the automatic reconciliation done with regards of the original
order ?

"signed for it" :
- how will the seller trust the signature ?

All this is real live business, for SME's and for big Corporates too.
Whatever you are using as standard (EDIFACT, X12, OAG, Bizztalk, Rosettanet,
...),
it's not the standard by itself which is difficult (being human readable or
not)
but the way to express how human activities are processed and how to
standardize them
in order to facilitate International Commerce.

What I want to stress here is that it's not Core Components definition which
is the problem. Standardizing and modelling Business Processes using CC as
building bloks are far more complicated and complex.
Core Components already exist since more than 20 years and they are called
Trade Data Elements.
An incredible amount of B2B has already been done using these data elements.
They are well defined and structured and Business specialists have been
working
on it in working groups like EDIFACT and X12 since many years.

Now thanks to the emergence of Internet and standards like XML, it should be
more easier
to use those data elements as building bloks for comercial documents than
EDIFACT or
X12 did it in the past.

Somebody said that, with regards to the outside world, ebXML needs to
deliver something
useable very quickly. I agree. So, why reinvent the wheel ?
Let's use what's already existing and keep 20 years B2B experience in mind
to standardize
business processes.

I'm pretty sure even anybody wants to do business with his watch, it will be
possible to do it
using this way.

Hope this contribution will help the process and I'll be ready to discuss it
in Vienna.

Kind regards,
Jean-Luc Champion
UN/EDIFACT Purchasing WG Chairman


___________________________________
Jean-Luc Champion
PSO Consultant, EMEA
Netfish Technologies Europe, Ltd.
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England  UB11 1FW

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