If You Want to Know More About B2B


You don’t need to know the information in this section, but if you are unfamiliar with B2B software and would like to know a little more, read on.

You may wonder what the difference is between shopping online and B2B. The biggest difference is that the "shopping" takes place between businesses. But it’s more than just that. As you know, businesses come with a great need for proper accounting and other organizational processes. With large companies, these processes should be well defined and include precise record-keeping. Precise record-keeping requires forms — lots of forms ferrying lots of data from department to department. If you order a couple of shirts over the Internet, you likely have no use for the forms you pull out of the box and toss aside. But when two businesses do business together, the forms are crucial to both sides of the transaction.

It’s the data on all those forms that create the challenge for B2B. If each company uses a different set of forms, how can the transactions be automated? The solution that rose out of this challenge was standards. Businesses could standardize on a single set of forms so that they could do business electronically.

But different industries require different sets of information. This need gave rise to multiple industry-specific standards. The EDI -X12 and RosettaNet standards emerged and were widely adopted by companies globally. B2B solutions must be able to accommodate multiple standards to meet the needs of large businesses conducting B2B ecommerce across multiple industries.

Similarly, there are multiple B2B software applications out there. If all trading partners had to have the same B2B software to do business together, this would severely limit electronic trade. For example, imagine if you could only use your mobile phone to talk with people who use the same mobile phone service?

As illustrated in Figure 2, your TIBCO BusinessConnect host can do business with companies using BusinessConnect and companies (or government) using other B2B software applications. A VAN (Value Added Network) is a company that allows its customers to connect into its software services, including B2B services.

TIBCO BusinessConnect Remote software allows small companies like yours to conduct B2B ecommerce with your BusinessConnect host without investing in another B2B software application. You can quickly and easily start exchanging documents securely with your BusinessConnect host over the Internet.

Figure 2 TIBCO BusinessConnect Communicates with Multiple B2B Solutions

TIBCO BusinessConnect™ Remote User’s Guide
Software Release 5.0, July 2006
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved
www.tibco.com