DOC.COM: combining document and communication management for negotiation support in business-to-business electronic commerce

Negotiation in traditional commerce is a complex communication process. Research in negotiation support for electronic commerce has focused on new negotiation protocols such as auctions. However, for peer-to-peer negotiations in business-to-business electronic commerce, such protocols are inappropriate. The authors present a novel approach to the effective support of electronic negotiations. Existing negotiation processes in traditional commerce are analysed to find out about negotiation patterns and to anticipate potential problems. Our aim is to exploit the potential of information technology to overcome (most of) these problems for electronic negotiations. Electronic negotiations between business partners involve the exchanges of documents and messages. Documents are contracts which evolve during the negotiations. The evolution is coordinated through the exchange of structured messages such as offers, requests, quotations, counteroffers, and acceptances. In contrast to the current practice of separate management of messages and documents, we propose a powerful framework for effective negotiation support in electronic commerce by combining communication and document management.