API

Application Service Provider

BMEcat

B2B

Procurement System

Collaborative Commerce

Content Management

Cross-Media-Publishing

cXML

Data Exchange Format

eCl@ss

eCommerce

Economies of scale

Electronic Marketplace

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

E-Procurement

E-Procurement-System

Business Processes

Host

Catalog (Exchange) Format

Catalog Management

API stands for Application Programming Interface. This programming interface allows programmers to expand a system or customize it to work with other systems.

An Application Service Provider (ASP) hosts a variety of applications on a central server. For a fee, customers can access the applications that interest them over secure Internet connections or a private network. This means that they do not need to purchase, install and maintain the software themselves; instead they rent the applications they need from their ASP. Even new releases, i.e., software upgrades, are generally included in the price. The network connection and infrastructure together with the software implementation are generally included in the services provided by ASPs as well.

BMEcat is a data exchange format based on an initiative by the German Association of Materials Management, Purchasing and Logistics ("Bundesverband Materialwirtschaft Einkauf und Logistik", BME). The standard was developed in cooperation with major German industrial firms. BMEcat establishes a standard structure for electronic catalogs and standardizes the exchange of product data between manufacturers and purchasing organizations. When exchanging data, it not only allows suppliers to transfer a completely new catalog but individual product or price updates as well, for example. BMEcat is based on the XML Internet standard established by the World Wide Web Consortium. All major e-commerce and e-procurement systems now provide support for importing BMEcat catalogs. This standard, supported by the purchasing departments of large corporations, was published for the first time at the end of 1999 and is now being adopted internationally by more and more companies as well.

B2B is short for 'Business to Business' and is used to designate those aspects of e-commerce that involve the exchange of goods of services between companies over the Internet. B2C (Business to Consumer), on the other hand, refers to Internet sales by businesses to consumers.
B2B platforms encompass not only commodity exchanges and wholesale supplies on the Internet but virtual auctions as well.

A procurement system is a software system for electronic purchasing, i.e., the acquisition of goods and services.

Collaborative commerce means that companies communicate and cooperate with one another as part of a comprehensive value-added chain of suppliers, consultants, customers and even employees. This includes the exchange of ideas, information and product data as well as the conclusion of business transactions. Collaborative commerce results in increased profits, and is, therefore, a win-win situation for all participants.

Content management is the general term for processing content. This can be unstructured content like web contents or structured content like product data, for example. In this sense, catalog management is actually a subset of content management. Frequently, however, the term content management is used as a synonym for web content management.

Cross-media publishing refers to the shared use of a single data source for different publication formats such as print, CD-Rom, web sites, and electronic catalogs, for example. In cross-media publishing, the data source is independent of the final publication medium.

cXML stands for 'commerce XML' and is a data exchange format used by Ariba.

The seamless exchange of product data between buyers and suppliers is indispensable for a correctly functioning e-procurement system. In order for different procurement systems to be able to 'read' electronic product catalogs, the catalogs must be available in the required format. Examples of these formats are: BMEcat, cXML and xCBL.

The domain concept is a core element of the POET catalog platforms.
They are based on an Internet architecture. They are designed so that users from different companies or departments can work in a unified environment together without worrying about the boundaries normally imposed by firewalls. The platform operator can establish separate workspaces, called domains, for internal and external users. These domains are protected against unauthorized access from other domains and provide a complete environment for creating and maintaining catalogs.
The permissions assigned to users for accessing the catalog data always refer to a specific domain. Generally, there is a 1:1 correspondence between domains and organizations. Domains can also have a hierarchical relationship to one another. Thanks to the domain concept, POET ePROCURE Suite can reproduce even the most complex corporate structures and processes optimally.

eCl@ss is a product classification scheme. It has found widespread acceptance on German marketplaces but can also be applied internationally as well. The standard was developed by major companies in various branches of German industry.

eCommerce is the term for electronic business transactions, commerce or Internet trade. eCommerce or eBusiness, therefore, refers to the business transactions between companies (B2B) or between companies and their customers (B2C) that are wholly or partially conducted over the Internet or similar public or private computer networks. eCommerce, however, not only refers to the electronic commerce of goods and services but all electronic business transactions, i.e., from trade to financial transactions (monetary transactions) as well, for example. At times, Internet marketing, such as e-mail advertising, for example, is also included in eCommerce. The boundary between eCommerce and eBusiness is not clearly defined. The two terms are often used synonymously.

Economies of scale refers to the synergies that arise when large quantities of a product are traded. These advantages are usually price-related.

An electronic marketplace is an Internet-based trading platform where buyers and sellers can meet and do business on. By bringing supply and demand together more efficiently, market transparency is increased and greater cost savings are possible. B2B marketplaces can have different numbers of buyers and sellers. A neutral marketplace offers its services to a large number of buyers and sellers. If the marketplace is run by a single buyer, it is referred to as an e-procurement solution or an electronic purchasing system.

ERP systems are software systems that are used for operational planning and administration and for optimizing internal business processes. The best-known supplier of these systems is SAP..

e-Procurement is the term for electronic procurement or purchasing. e-Procurement is a part of e-business and is used to designate the optimized, Internet-based acquisition process of a company. It refers not just to the purchasing process itself but to electronic negotiations and the conclusion of contracts with suppliers as well.
Because the purchasing process is simplified by the electronic handling of operative tasks, strategic tasks can be given a more important role in the process. These new strategic purchasing tasks include the management of contacts to existing and new suppliers as well as the creation of new market structures by actively consolidating the supply-side.

See Procurement System.

On the one hand, business processes refer to the workflows within a company and, on the other hand, to the processes involved in inter-company transactions – in other words: offers, price negotiations, purchasing agreements, and orders. Software that reproduces these business processes, therefore, can be both an ERP system as well as e-commerce software.

A host is a computer that provides data or services to other computers on a network. A host, for example, can be a mainframe or a server.

See Data Exchange Format.

Catalog management is the abstract umbrella term for all electronic catalog and e-procurement processes. For the supplier, catalog management includes the creation of a central catalog as well as specific customer catalogs and, ultimately, the delivery of these catalogs to the buyer. The buyer then verifies, approves, and unites these product catalogs into a multi-supplier catalog that can be used for ordering.

In order for detailed, high-quality product information to be available in the procurement systems of large corporations, experts from both the purchasing organization as well as suppliers need to work together optimally. A catalog platform is a software solution that supports the necessary workflows for this process both across departments and companies. For the supplier, these workflows include catalog generation; for the buyer, verification of the catalog and additional processing to convert them into complete, company-specific catalogs.

Classification means grouping similar objects into classes. In supermarkets all similar type goods like dairy products, foodstuffs, or candies can be found in one place and each product group is further subdivided or classified – into butter, yogurt, milk, for example. In order for buyers to be able to quickly locate, logically order, and compare products from different suppliers with one another easily, product classifications are necessary as well. The product data is structured using a standardized classification scheme. Thus products with similar properties are grouped together into specific product classes.
There have been a number of attempts at establishing an international product classification standard. These include eCl@ss and UN/SPSC, for example.

Load balancing is a feature that is integrated into catalog solutions in order to prevent system crashes and ensure trouble-free access to the system when a large number of users access an electronic marketplace at the same time.

The monitoring and messaging features in POET ePROCURE Suite are used to actively inform users about tasks which require their input.

MRO articles are so-called non-productive goods. MRO stands for Maintenance, Repair, Organization. MRO articles include office material (from pencils to desks), material for cleaning and maintaining buildings, as well as services like business trips, accommodation, catering services and even the supply of office space and buildings. These kinds of MRO goods are well suited to electronic procurement because they can be easily standardized and the differences between the individual suppliers are generally minor. In addition, these articles are not critical for production; i.e., they do not form part of the actual final product. Price, therefore, is usually the main criterion when making a purchasing decision.

A multi-supplier catalog contains the electronic product catalogs from a number of different suppliers. With a multi-supplier catalog, buyers can compare similar goods from different manufacturers and make an informed purchasing decision at their workstation.

A data exchange interface used by the SAP Open Content Network (OCN). All purchasing organizations that use the SAP EBP/BBP procurement system are connected to this network.

Virtual auctions on the Internet. The seller sells the product to the person who offers the highest price. For sellers, online auctions open up new sales channels for new products and offer buyers favorable purchasing conditions.

Procurement catalogs are individually negotiated electronic product catalogs and must comply with the specific requirements of the purchasing organization. One important aspect of electronic procurement in large companies is control of the acquisition process. The company's employees are not supposed to order the goods they need from just any supplier (cf. Maverick Buying), but from suppliers with whom a framework agreement has been reached. The product catalogs of the manufacturers, therefore, have to be fed into the purchasing organization's procurement systems directly – and employees are only allowed to order from these catalogs.
This means that the catalogs must meet specific format requirements, such as BMEcat or eCl@ss, for example. These requirements may differ from one company to another. To create these catalogs, you need a catalog solution that can derive different catalog versions from a central database with a minimum of maintenance.

The publish/subscribe mechanism is a brand-new method for exchanging catalogs. Publish/subscribe is also referred to as "hot distribution" or "synchronization". The recipient receives catalogs using an application level protocol like http, for example, which allows a controlled exchange of error and status reports as well. The advantage is that the consistency of the catalogs can be ensured throughout their entire lifecycle by intelligently assigning responsibilities and activities. For buyers, this means that they can subscribe to product catalogs from the manufacturer, amongst other things. They are then automatically notified when a new catalog has been received and verified using preset rules.

A reverse auction is an auction in which the usual roles of buyer and seller are reversed. In a reverse auction, a company specifies its need for a product and the suppliers submit offers for the good. MRO goods are especially suited for reverse auctions.

The self-service features of POET eProcure Suite and POET eCommerce Suitecome into play in the version for marketplace operators. Product information and catalogs are hosted by the marketplace operator. Suppliers and buyers are connected to the catalog platform via a web browser and can maintain their own product data and catalogs directly on the platform.

In the broadest sense, scalability is the ability to use a software environment on a whole series of different computers without changes – i.e., to expand the software's area of application. The term also refers to the possibility of increasing the data throughput requirements by simply changing the hardware without having to make any substantial changes to the software itself. The software is then referred to as scalable.

Staging means breaking a productive process down into multiple steps. To create an electronic catalog, for instance, data has to be collected and then unified into a central document. Only then can the catalog be exported in a standard catalog format. Software with staging functions is able to handle all of the individual steps of a process.

Supplier Relationship Management is the management of the flow of information between suppliers and purchasing organizations and the integration of supplier information in the procurement process by the buyer.

Supply Chain Management is the management of the entire value-added chain, from the supplier to manufacturer right through to the retailer and the final customer. SCM has three primary goals: Reduce inventory, increase the transaction speed by exchanging data in real-time, and increase sales by implementing customer requirements more efficiently.

Supplier domains are limited workspaces within a catalog platform. POET catalog platforms can be opened up for external use regardless of whether they are operated by a marketplace, purchasing organization or a catalog service provider. To do so, the operator simply configures supplier domains for external users who are usually suppliers. The suppliers can then log in to the platform and use it in self-service mode to generate or maintain their catalogs (cf. Domain Concept).

UN/SPSC (United Nations Standard Product & Services Code) is a classification scheme that is used primarily in North America.

xCBL stands for 'XML Common Business Library' and is a data exchange format. For more information about this format, see www.xcbl.org.

XML is the abbreviation for 'Extensible Markup Language' and designates a universal data format for publishing and exchanging structured documents on the Internet or Intranets.