E2open Tools Simplify B2B Integration

Business-to-business trading hub E2open Inc. aims to overcome the technical and financial barriers to getting suppliers, partners and customers connected to electronic trading communities with its new B2B Integration Solution.

The suite of software integration tools, announced last week, is geared toward making the so-called onboarding of e-trading constituents a more straightforward process, in part by making it easier to onboard groups of 50 to 500 partners at once.

B2B Integration Solution is an open-source infrastructure that includes a B2B Client that enables enterprises to give third-party users—small and midsize businesses, in particular—self-service registration. The client establishes connectivity by registering users and managing the movement of data from a companys network to E2open.

A document repository enables document-versioning management, while a mapping tool provides the ability for users to map fields into their back-end systems, based on the hardware and software a trading partner is using.

A new testing tool provides a simulated test environment that eliminates the need for buyers and sellers to test transactions simultaneously until the host partys internal tests and connections are successful. This means users could have hundreds of partners going through the process simultaneously, according to E2open, of Redwood City, Calif.

Finally, a transaction monitoring tool enables users to flag errors in live transactions, alert the appropriate people and replay any failed transactions.