B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

202 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
• Easy procedure of adding new trading partners like counterparties;
and
• Reduce operational risks while increasing business opportunities for
the wholesale financial services.
7.4. Commerce XML (cXML)
cXML is an open Internet-based standard for e-commerce. It is a set of
lightweight XML DTDs — based on the World Wide Web Consortium's
XML standard — with their associated request/response processes.
cXML reduces online business trading costs by facilitating the exchange
of content and transactions over the Internet. cXML provides an
infrastructure for digitally exchanging catalog content and transactions
in a secure manner. cXML supports all supplier content and catalog
models, including buyer-managed, supplier-managed, content management
services, electronic marketplaces and Web-based sourcing organizations.
This allows suppliers to provide customers with selective access to
personalized catalog content while maintaining their unique branding
and competitive differentiation.
cXML defines a request/response process for the exchange of
transaction information. These business processes include purchase
orders, change orders, acknowledgments, status updates, ship notifications
and payment transactions.
cXML also has a lower cost of implementation because of its XML
base and ability to leverage existing HTML e-commerce infrastructure
and software. For example, cXML leverages suppliers' existing
e-commerce capabilities by allowing buyers to access supplier Websites
from within a buy-side application. Using this functionality, buyers can
see their contracted items, private prices and access product configurators
or libraries of products. Since cXML is Internet-based, it provides a
more cost-effective alternative to EDI and other methods of exchanging
catalog content and transactions.
Following are the main types of cXML documents:
• Catalog — used by suppliers to convey product and service content
to buyers.