Will web services solve the content problem for B2B?
Data Transport does not mean transactions, argues Mike Hogan
4 June 2001, 11 am GMT
Will web services resolve the content problem that has been inhibiting the growth of B2B?
The quick answer is that web services provide an important transport for transactionable data, but it does not make your data transactionable, and that is the most pressing issue today.
In the early stages of B2B, the assumption was that content would be free. Like the Internet itself, content would be ubiquitous, or so the story went. However, the problem is that the content isn't there and it's really hard to assemble.
In order to work for B2B, content must be transactionable.
In other words, (using real English words) the content must be capable of supporting transactions
Transactionable content must have the 5 C's: it must be Clean, Categorized, Complete, Customized and
Current.
Let's explain.
Clean:
Much of the content in back-office systems is riddled with abbreviations and acronyms. For example, one company might use BL as
an abbreviation for blue, while another uses it for black. Companies need to clean their data so that the data is understandable by the
general public.
Categorized:
In order to accommodate the rich diversity of goods available, the data from multiple companies must be categorized.
Otherwise, you won't be able to sort through the content to find what you need. The problem here is that there is no single
categorization scheme. There are broad based categorization schemes such UN/SPSC and eClass. And then there are a great number of
vertical categorization schemes. Most companies have not yet categorized their data.
Complete:
In order to be complete, the data must have all of the information necessary for a customer to make a buy decision. For
example, it is not sufficient to describe a PC as having a P-III 800mHz, 20Gig HD and 256M Mem. Even after expanding the abbreviations, the buyer will want to know whether there is a CD ROM drive, what speed, does it handle DVDs? What about the keyboard?
Mouse? Software? Floppy Drive? etc. If the information isn't complete, the buyer cannot make a buy decision.
Customized:
In order to work for B2B, the content must be customized to reflect each buyer's contract pricing, format, product selection, etc. Customization is a huge effort. For an example of customization, consider a company that has standardized on only four configurations of desktop computers from a single vendor at a deep discount. If the eCatalog contains incorrect configurations or prices then it simply won't work.
Current:
If the data in the eCatalog is ld, then it also won't work. If it doesn't reflect new products, retired products, current pricing, etc. then it will cause problems for both buyers and sellers.
The most significant inhibitor of B2B eCommerce is a lack of transactionable content that offers the 5 C's. Once the content problem is addressed, then web services will be an important means for shuttling the data between trading partners. In the meantime, web services will be used to address transactions, exposing services such as credit checking, and also for collaboration.
Mike Hogan is VP of Business at Poet Software
www.poet.com
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