A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

  1 

Business transaction. A single business transaction between two partners, such as plac-

ing an order or shipping an order.

 2 

Binary collaboration. A sequence of these business transactions, performed between 

two partners, each performing one role.

  3 

 Multi-  party  collaboration. A series of binary collaborations composed of a collection of 

business partners.

One application developed using ebXML enables different accounting packages to com-

municate with online order processing systems. This new standard has been recognised by 

85% of the accounting industry, the World Wide Web Consortium and the United Nations. 

Over 120 national and international accounting software vendors have confirmed that they 

are developing interfaces. Exchequer Software Ltd (www.exchequer.com) is the first com-

pany to embed this new technology in its products, which means it receives orders via email 

directly into its own accounting system. This has resulted in a reduction of 30% in processing 

costs and a sales increase of 40%. The digital business module of the accounting software can 

be used to provide a remotely hosted e-commerce shopping cart system with regular updates 

of stock details, pricing matrices, account information and transactional data, such as out-

standing orders and invoices.

Governments are also using XML to standardise data transfer between departments.