ABSTRACT
An enterprise is the focus of convergent relationships with suppliers, partners, clients, and banks that result in information exchanges. However, a large number of data are reproduced from one form to another inside a given enterprise. When these data reentries are done manually, they can be a source of errors that must later be detected and corrected. In addition, paper documents must be organized and archived for legal and fiscal reasons. As a result, the cost of processing contract documents in paper can reach 7% of the total transaction cost (Breton, 1994; Dupoirier, 1995). The first objective of the dematerialization of business-to-business commerce is to eliminate this additional cost through the exchange of structured and predefined data among the information systems involved in the conduct of businesses, thereby streamlining the tasks of billing, account management, inventory management, etc. (Sandoval, 1990; Kimberley, 1991; Charmot, 1997b; Troulet-Lambert, 1997). A new need emerged as a consequence of restructuring the supply chain as enterprises focused on their core competencies and out-sourced nonessential activities. Just-in-time management, in particular, requires unimpeded and continuous circulation of the information to coordinate production planning with the product delivery and market predictions in real time.
