The role of standardisation in inter-organisational business processes

In business co-operation standards are often used to facilitate interactions between companies. In this paper, we discuss and compare seven suggested standardisation efforts in order to answer the question of what role standardisation will play in such co-operations. The comparison shows that standardisation indeed is becoming an important part of business processes, particularly in those that flow across organisational boundaries. Commercial as well as non-profit organisations are joining hands in developing standardisation efforts to smooth, speed up and automate the way in which business is done in various trading communities