Commerce One South Africa - Distributor Operations has successfully used MicrosoftBizTalk in conjunction with Commerce One`s MarketSite software and Enterprise Buyer (e-procurement) software to allow seamless integration between Enterprise Buyer and the backend ERP systems of the respective companies with no additional development work.
"One of the biggest hurdles for companies wishing to maximise their e-commerce implementations is the cost of integration of their backend (ERP) systems with e-marketplaces," says Janice Kallmeyer, new business development director at Commerce One SA. "Using Microsoft`s BizTalk Server we have found a way that is cost-effective and efficient."
Kallmeyer explains that when a buyer creates a purchase order using Commerce One`s Enterprise Buyer (e-procurement software) this is integrated back into the ERP system of the buying company using BizTalk. Once the buyer administrator approves the purchase order, using the standard business procedures of the buying organisation, it is routed through Commerce One`s MarketSite software. This e-marketplace routes the different orders to the relevant suppliers. Once the supplier receives the order response this again integrates into the suppliers` ERP system using BizTalk.
"No additional integration is required by either the e-procurement vendor nor the buyer/supplier," she says.
This has been achieved by using native BizTalk functionality to build a Gateway that allows messages to be exchanged between trading partners` buying applications (Commerce One Enterprise Buyer in this instance) and trading partners running BizTalk Server.
Ease of integration
BizTalk allowed Commerce One South Africa to send documents to an e-marketplace (Commerce One`s MarketSite) running the MarketSite Gateway for Microsoft Biztalk Framework. The integration of Enterprise Buyer into the ERP package was easily accomplished using BizTalk mapping and self-routing. BizTalk was able to accept standard XML documents from the Enterprise Buyer and convert these into a format that was acceptable to the ERP system. This meant that without any development work on Enterprise Buyer (the Commerce One e-procurement system) or the ERP system we were able to create seamless integration of the packages using BizTalk Server.
Providing this functionality is part of a joint development strategy between Microsoft and Commerce One providing new software solutions aimed at simplifying the deployment of e-marketplaces and enabling businesses of all sizes to buy, sell and collaborate on the Web.
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