Dynamic Digital Process Integration in Business-to-Business Networks

Abstract

Transparent end-to-end business process integration is the leading edge of today’s business-to-business electronic commerce revolution. Firms enter into electronic inter-organizational networks not only to conduct procurement-oriented transactions (supply chain management), but increasingly, they are strategically outsourcing business processes and activities which are not part of the their distinctive competence (strategically core activities) and provided by a new breed of digital process specialists. The evolution of agent-based inter-organizational systems enables complex direct interaction between heterogeneous information systems, which allow Web-based eServices to act autonomously, communicate independently, discover each other, provide dynamically configured services to one another, and establish composite business systems.