Business-to-Business Data Integration: Why B2B Data Exchange needs DI Tools and Techniques

Partnering companies have long exchanged data associated with supply chains and financial routing networks, and more recently with online trade exchanges, e-commerce, and business process outsourcing. Many large companies sync data across business units in a similar fashion. Applications for business-to-business (B2B) data exchange have been around for years, and many have been modernized by interoperating with platforms for enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management (BPM). And they have begun incorporating the tools and techniques of data integration (DI). That’s so the applications can cope with the numerous data standards that are common in B2B data exchange, plus versions and variants of these. DI also gives B2B data exchange the BI, data quality, stewardship, and remediation functions it has lacked. When DI is used in this context, it’s called B2B data integration.