WO2009016127A1

WO2009016127A1 - System for managing the exchange of documents between a customer and a supplier for flexible and non-invasive purchase management

Info

Publication number: WO2009016127A1
Application number: PCT/EP2008/059826
Authority: WO
Inventors: Andrea Tinti
Original assignee: Smarten S.R.L.
Priority date: 2007-07-27
Filing date: 2008-07-25
Publication date: 2009-02-05
Also published as: EP2188765A1; ITMO20070251A1

Abstract

A system (10) for managing the exchange of documents (11) related to purchases of goods and services in electronic form over data communications networks (5), particularly the Internet, comprising a proprietary information management system (10) for writing and managing documents and means for defining a workflow (23) and rules in any electronic format, means for converting a document (11), workflow (23) and rules into a message in a predefined standard electronic format, particularly an e-mail message (30), which can be interpreted by one or more standard applications, particularly e-mail clients, and means for sending the message from a first customer (1) station to at least one other station (40) of a supplier (2) via standard communication protocols, in addition to a third dedicated station which receives from the supplier (2) the replies provided by the customer's document (11) and sends the reply to the customer (1) in the form of an e-mail message (30), so that the supplier (2) does not need to have particular applications and so that the size (in terms of number of characters) and the complexity of the reply documents originated by the supplier (2) are not limited.

Description

SYSTEM FOR MANAGING THE EXCHANGE OF DOCUMENTS BETWEEN A CUSTOMER AND A SUPPLIER FOR FLEXIBLE AND NON-INVASIVE PURCHASE MANAGEMENT Technical Field The present invention relates to a system for managing the exchange of documents between a customer and a supplier for flexible and noninvasive purchase management.

In particular, the present invention lies in the context of services for automating the exchange of documents related to purchase management, for example the purchase order of a product or service or a work order, and to all the possible steps of its life cycle, such as the order proposal, the request for offer, the order confirmation, the order amendment request, the progress of activities scheduled by the order, the issuing of the transport document related to the ordered items, nonconformity reports, invoices and payments, between customers and suppliers.

Background Art

In recent years there has been a considerable development of means of communication, both from a technological standpoint and in terms of the spread of data communications networks, particularly the Internet. This development has given rise to a process of transformation in the management of many activities traditionally performed manually, introducing the possibility to increase efficiency considerably and at the same time reduce the management costs of a company by way of the automation of many steps of the work cycles. Technological development further affects all fields and induces companies to increasingly outsource their activities, both to guarantee themselves the benefits of production areas with a lower labor cost and to obtain the benefit of a higher efficiency of scale or skill that specific suppliers can ensure, maintaining in-house only the strategic activities for their area of competence, focusing their efforts on what is known as their core business and delegating third parties to the management of secondary activities, leading to an intense collaboration and interaction among different companies.

These collaborations are typically hierarchical, of the buyer- subcontractor or customer-suppliers type, often structured into multiple levels, such as buyer-supply chain. In some cases they can also be of a peer- to-peer type, for example as a consequence of an agreement among entrepreneurs to market certain components together in order to offer added value to the end customer. As a result of the operating scenario described above, the concepts of information technology integration among companies are becoming increasingly important both for small and medium enterprises, which need close collaborations in order to be competitive with respect to large companies, and for large companies, which need efficient methods and tools for managing in the best possible way their supply chains, which change and evolve continuously.

Integration among companies, in particular, is linked to problems in improving organization performance, in which attention is focused on the communication of information and on the coordination and optimization of the processes and decisions of the companies, so as to achieve higher levels of productivity , flexibility and quality.

Various specific needs of electronic and automated management have therefore arisen, particularly for purchase management.

One effective method for processing orders is known from US2003/0163346, which discloses the possibility to make customers and suppliers interact by means of e-mail messages in standard HTML. In particular, a customer prepares the order by filling in a form which is made for example with HTML and sends it to a supplier in the form of an e-mail message. The HTML form contains appropriately provided buttons generated by the customer's application on the basis of the status of the document and of the actions that the supplier can perform on that type of document in that state, and which, once pressed, allow the supplier to generate automatically the desired response in the form of a new e-mail message which contains, for example, a confirmation of the received order or a proposal to amend the order, obtained by entering the desired values directly in the fields of the HTML form received by the supplier.

The generation of the reply to the customer's document by means of the supplier's e-mail client is automatic, since the e-mail message generated by the customer's system, in addition to the information regarding the informational content of the customer's document, contains Javascripts. When the message is received and therefore displayed in the supplier's e- mail client, these Javascripts allow to generate e-mail messages by using the "mailto" function. Automatic generation of the e-mail message is fundamental in order to ensure that the supplier can perform only the actions planned by the customer and ensure that the customer's system can interpret correctly the message when it will receive it. The e-mail client used by the user of the supplier supports HTML, and therefore allows to handle the "mailto" function. In particular, the limitations that occur in the markup languages used (e.g., HTML), for example in the <mailto:> function, force limitations to the size of the data exchanged via e-mail messages. Therefore, for excessively long orders or for particular complex messages, some data may be lost.

Further, in the e-mail clients currently in use, in certain cases specific configurations are required in order to ensure the operation of the Javascripts needed for automatic generation of the reply message by means of the <mailto:> function.

It is therefore evident that the background art does not yet have an optimum solution for exchanging information in the contest of purchase management. Disclosure of the Invention

The aim of the present invention is to provide a system for managing the exchange between customer and supplier of documents related to the purchase of goods and services which overcomes the above-mentioned drawbacks and in particular introduces flexibility in the step for the automatic generation of the e-mail message on the part of the supplier in reply to the document received from the customer, eliminating the problems of size limitation and of consequent risk of loss of the data of the messages sent by the supplier. Within this aim, an object of the present invention is to make the generation of the e-mail message in reply to the document received from the customer independent of the characteristics of the e-mail client used by the user of the supplier.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a system that can track the transactions that have occurred between suppliers and customers.

This aim and these and other objects, which will become better apparent hereinafter, are achieved by a system for managing the exchange of documents between a customer and a supplier for flexible and non-invasive purchase management of goods and services in electronic form over one or more data communications networks according to claim 1. Brief description of the drawings

Further characteristics and advantages of the invention will become better apparent from the following detailed description, illustrated by way of non-limiting example in the accompanying drawings, wherein: Figure 1 is a schematic view of a first embodiment of the system according to the invention;

Figure 2 is a schematic view of a second embodiment of the system according to the invention;

Figure 3 is a block diagram which illustrates in greater detail an adapter module used in the present invention; Figure 4 is a diagram which exemplifies the data flow related to an implementation of the present invention;

Figure 5 is an example of a dialog box of an order of a customer as displayed at the supplier's station; Figure 6 is a block diagram which shows in greater detail a Web server used in the present invention;

Figure 7 is a state diagram which illustrates graphically an example of workflow.

Ways of carrying out the Invention Figure 1 is a view of a first embodiment of the architecture of the system according to the invention.

In particular, Figure 1 illustrates schematically an information management system 10 of a customer 1 , an adapter module 20, a document

1 1, an e-mail message 30, a supplier's computer 40, which contains a traditional e-mail program selected among one of the commercially available programs, for example Microsoft Outlook™, Netscape

Messenger™, Qualcomm Eudora™ or Lotus Notes™ of a recipient 2 of the message 30 and a data communications network 5, preferably the Internet.

The system also comprises a Web server 50, which is functionally connected to the data communications network 5.

The elements shown schematically in Figure 1 are shown by way of example and illustrate what are actually a plurality of customer stations and a plurality of recipient stations.

Within a supply chain, there are in fact more or less complex collaboration relations which, for the sake of clarity in illustration, can be summarily simplified to one-to-one ratio relations of the customer-supplier type, where the term "customer" is used to designate the party requesting a product or service and the term "supplier" is used to designate the party that supplies the product or service. Figure 2 is a view of a second embodiment of the architecture of the system according to the invention, in which the Web server 50 is located in a private network 6 of the customer 1 , optionally protected by a security means such as a firewall 7, which is interposed between the private network 6 and the data communications network 5. The adapter module 20 is an application which is capable of converting the document 11 of any size to be exchanged between the customer 1 and the supplier, for example a purchase order, into an e-mail message which is compatible with any suitable standard or proprietary communications method, which can be used on the data communications network 5 and contains information on the intended flow.

Purely by way of non-limiting example, the invention is described here with reference to the Internet in the role of data communications network 5 and to the use of e-mail on electronic computers as regards the data transmission method. Of course, the person skilled in the art will appreciate that the same inventive concept can be applied equally to many data communications networks and by using alternative communications systems, for example GPRS and UMTS cellular networks and e-mail programs for mobile phones or handheld devices, as well as browsers or anything else that allows the management of this information.

Figure 3 is a more detailed view of the structure of the adapter module 20. In the adapter module 20 there is an interface 21 toward the information management system 10, a data converter 27, a database 23 called "workflow", a database 24 called "documents", a sending and receiving module 28 and a user interface 26.

In greater detail, the interface 21 is a module which is capable of taking or receiving from the information management system 10 the documents 1 1 to be transmitted to the suppliers 2 and of updating or sending to the information management system 10 the documents received from the suppliers 2, according to the workflow 23 and the path of the information management system defined by the customer 1.

The data converter 27, which will also be referenced by the term "e- mail converter", performs substantially two functions.

The first function is constituted by the conversion of the document 1 1, taken or received from the information management system 10 and of any size, into a first message 30, in the case shown here an e-mail message, and the inclusion in the message 30, after optional format conversion, of additional data defined in the "workflow" database 23. In particular, the e- mail message 30, preferably in the Mime Multipart format, comprises a portion in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) or XML (extended Markup Language) or written in other languages of the markup type, which represents the documents and information related to the orders and/or the life cycle of the orders. The information contained in this portion is therefore readable directly by the supplier 2 and can also be interpreted unambiguously by an automatic processing system.

The portion written in a markup language comprises a particular known command, called <post>, which is accompanied by the address of the Web server 50 and is preferably associated with at least one clickable graphic element which can be displayed on the supplier's computer 40 together with the HTML (or XML) page related to the order, as shown for example by the CHANGE graphic button in Figure 5 related to the sending of an amendment to the order.

The <post> function has the particular advantage of allowing to send documents of any size by indicating the address of a remote Web server 50 that is designed to receive the amendment requests and by incorporating in the sent content the indication of a recipient e-mail address (the customer's system 10). In the case of the invention, the remote Web server 50 is capable of converting a document 1 1 that is sent to it, by means of the <post> command, by a remote computer, such as the computer 40 of the supplier 2, into an e-mail message 30 by means of a suitable program. Likewise, for example the CONFIRM graphic button in Figure 5 related to the sending of an order confirmation might be associated with the <mailto> function of the markup language and might allow to generate directly the e-mail message 30 for the customer 1 without using the Web server 50, although it is necessary to provide a text-only message of limited size in order to avoid the reoccurrence of the problems described above.

A second optional function of the data converter 27 is converting the received messages to the proprietary format of the customer 1. The documents thus converted can be entered into the proprietary information management system 10 of the customer 1.

The Web server 50, shown in greater detail in Figure 6, is connected to the communications network 5, optionally indirectly as shown in Figure 2. The Web server 50 comprises a network interface 51, which is adapted to exchange data between the communications network 5 and the software and hardware modules that are present in the Web server 50. Optionally, the Web server 50 can comprise a module for analyzing the document sent to the network 5 by the supplier's computer 40 by means of the <post> command, in order to verify any errors in the entries of the received form or interpret the action to be performed as a consequence of receiving the received document.

Advantageously, it is possible to store in a data bank 55 the details of the transactions that have occurred between the supplier 2 and the customer 1 in order to track them and optionally report them to the customer, for example to indicate which supplier has the greatest availability, i.e., the one that most frequently confirms orders without amendments.

The Web server 50 further comprises an application 54, 56, which is adapted to convert the received document into a second e-mail message 30 to be sent to the customer 1. This type of software application can be provided easily by the person skilled in the art and optionally but not necessarily can rely on an e-mail program 56. The e-mail address of the customer 1 is incorporated in the form sent initially by means of the e-mail message 30 by the customer 1.

Going back to Figure 3, workflow 23 is a database which contains information regarding the flow provided for each type of document 11 and each type of supplier 2, as well as information related to the layout of the message 30, as described in greater detail hereinafter.

The documents database 24 contains all the active documents, classified according to appropriate strategies: for example, documents 11 to be sent, sent documents 11 and documents received from the communications network 5 and information regarding their status.

The sending and receiving module 28 is a software application which has the task of managing the sending and reception of e-mail messages 30 to the suppliers 2 according to the chosen protocol and according to known communications techniques. Preferably, the protocols used to send and receive are respectively the standard protocols SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) and POP/IMAP (Post Office Protocol/Internet Message Access Protocol), particularly POP3/IMAP4.

Further, the message 30 can be enhanced with additional information which is attached automatically or manually, such as documents in different formats, for example files of the Adobe Acrobat™ type, as annexed technical documentation, a copy to confirm the order that is present in the message body, or others.

Finally, the user interface 26 identifies the application used to visualize and organize documents from and for the suppliers 2.

The user interface 26 mainly has means for visualizing the content of the documents database 24, but also means for customizing the state diagram that defines the flow of the documents. For example, the possibility to have an "amendment request" status, which also can be associated with a <post> command, which allows the supplier 2 to request an amendment to the order received with the e-mail message 30, for example an amendment to the date of delivery of a received purchase order, or allows to regulate the interaction among different document flows, for example the possibility to send a transport document only if the purchase orders related to the products provided in the transport document are in a given state, for example the "confirmed" state.

The message 30, which is an e-mail message, is the actual document that is exchanged between the customer 1 and the supplier 2, and therefore allows to transfer both the data related to the order and the information on the expected workflow.

However, the supplier 2 might not be aware that his message to amend the order is not sent directly to the customer 1 but instead passes through a Web server 50 for subsequent conversion. This is an advantage in terms of flexibility, since the supplier 2 is aware that he does not need to have particular software applications in order to meet the order request, but simply has to act on the fields that he sees displayed by means of his e-mail program or by means of his Web browser.

The operation of the system is now described in an exemplifying embodiment thereof, shown schematically in Figure 4, which is useful to better understand the inventive concept on which the present invention is based.

The customer 1 uses the interface of his own information management system 10 to generate a new order (step 400), in the manner provided by the information management system 10 on which he usually works. When the order is ready for sending, the customer 1 can activate the procedure for converting the document 1 1.

The adapter module 20 receives, via the interface 21 , the data 1 1 related to the new order and passes them to the converter 27, which converts the data 1 1 from the proprietary format used by the information management system 10 to a format in the standard language chosen for the message 30.

At the same time, the converter 27 recovers from the database 23 the workflow related to the order, which can be different from one order to the next and can be modified by the user via the interface 26, and completes the message 30 (step 405). In particular, the workflow 23 defines which operations the supplier 2 can perform in response to the received order. A first possibility is, for example, asking the supplier 2 to merely accept or refuse the order. A more advanced possibility is enabling the supplier 2 to amend some parameters of the order, such as the delivery date of each individual ordered product or service, the quantity delivered or to be delivered, the purchase price, and so forth.

An example of workflow 23 displayed graphically is shown in Figure 7 by means of a diagram of states. The twelve possible state transitions (from 901 to 912) are listed in the following Table 1, which clarifies, as regards the provided example, the state variation and the subject (customer 1 or supplier 2) that determined its new state, as well as the action defined inside the exchanged message 30 triggered by the change of state.

Id Initial state Final state Subject Action

901 New Proposed Customer Notify Supplier send Notification to Siφphei (oi dei proposal)

902 Proposed Proposed Customei Notify Supplier

903 Proposed Amended Supplier Notify Manager: send Notification to the ordei Managei

904 Amended Proposed Customei Notify Supplier

905 Amended Confirmed Customei Notify Supplier

906 Confirmed FrModif Supplier Notify Manager

907 Confϊimed Closed Customei

908 Confirmed Proposed Customer Notify Supplier

909 Proposed Confirmed Supplier Notify Managei

910 Proposed Cancelled Customei Notify Supplier

91 1 Amended Cancelled Customei Notify Supplier

912 Confii med Cancelled Customer Notify Supplier

Table 1 Figure 5 shows an example of how a new order generated by the adapter module 20 following a request for sending by the customer 1 can appear on screen at the supplier 2. In this case, the customer 1 has enabled the possibility to confirm the order or to amend the order delivery date and the possibility to enter notes next to each ordered product.

Once the order is physically ready for sending, the message is sent automatically or the customer 1 uses suitable software means made available in the user interface 26, for example a graphic button, to send the created message 30 (step 410). As a consequence of this, the documents database 24 is updated automatically by entering the data of the message 30 (Step 415).

When the supplier 2 connects to the data communications network 5, the message 30 is received (step 420), displayed on screen (step 425) and optionally entered in a database of the supplier 2 (step 430). The supplier 2, after assessing the content of the order, can now decide to send a reply to the customer 1, for example confirm the order or propose amendments, to the extent provided by the message 30 (step 435). This occurs by acting on a respective graphical button, described earlier, which is provided on the order form that is displayed on screen at the computer 40 of the supplier 2 and associated with a <post> command and with the address of the Web server 50 (Figure 5).

The supplier 2 confirms the order and prepares the corresponding message (step 440) or the supplier 2 amends the data of the order, for example the delivery date (step 445), and prepares the message to propose the amendments made (step 450). Message preparation occurs automatically by acting on the graphic buttons associated with respective <ρost> commands (for example, <post> of the confirmed document or <post> of the amended document), thus sending the HTML or XML portion of the message 30 (optionally modified by the supplier 3) in a "post" message 60 (step 455) to the Web server 50, which can optionally be followed by automatic updating of the database at the supplier's computer 40 (step 460).

At the Web server 50, the message 60 generated by means of the

<post> command, which corresponds to the actual content of the order

(optionally amended by the supplier), is received by the network interface 51 and is optionally analyzed by an analysis module 52 in order to decide how to continue (step 465). At this point, the Web server 50, on the basis of the e-mail address of the customer 1 incorporated originally in the message

30 sent to the supplier 2 and present in the content of the message 60, generates a second e-mail message 30', by means of the appropriately provided application 54/56, and the e-mail message 30' is sent to the customer 1 (step 470) by means of the communications network 5. The e- mail message 30' contains the information received from the Web server 50 in the message 60, for example the indication of the order confirmation accompanied by the list of confirmed products or the list of the products whose information has been amended. These indications can in turn be in HTML, XML or equivalent markup language formats, or can be simply inserted as plain text in the body of the second e-mail message.

With reference to Figure 1 , it should be noted that it is not necessary for the supplier 2 to have particular programs for receiving orders or amending them, since the received message 30 can be displayed in any e- mail program and modified by means of the functions (for example, the <form> function in HTML) commonly offered by markup languages, which allow data modification and the generation of a new module with the modified data. Therefore, the same e-mail client used by the supplier 2 to receive the e-mail message 30 is, like all the most widespread e-mail clients, capable of acting also as a tool for entering additional information, according to what is defined in the HTML or XML portion of the received message 30. As an alternative, or in addition, the HTML/XML content of the e-mail message 30 can also be displayed with an ordinary Web page browser or viewer. It has thus been shown that the present invention achieves the intended aim and objects. In particular, it has been shown that the described system allows automation of customer-supplier communications, ensuring easy integration with the various management systems of the customer and supplier, the possibility for the customer to define the workflow of documents with the different suppliers and for documents of any size, the possibility for the supplier to manage communications through a standard application which is normally used, such as an e-mail client.

Clearly, numerous modifications will be evident and can be performed promptly by the person skilled in the art without thereby abandoning the scope of the protection of the appended claims. For example, it is obvious for the person skilled in the art to replace one communications protocol with another one, depending on the requirements of the players in the system and of the technology made available commercially.

It is also evident that the inventive concept on which the present invention is based is independent of the actual implementation of the software modules, which can be provided in any language and on any hardware platform, and likewise the manner of integration with the various management systems of customers and suppliers is non-limiting as regards the invention, so long as it is capable of importing and exporting information in a proprietary manner or, in this case also, according to a standard, for example ebXML.

Therefore, the scope of protection of the appended claims must not be limited by the illustrations or by the preferred embodiments shown in the description as examples, but rather the claims must comprise all the characteristics of patentable novelty that reside within the present invention, including all the characteristics that would be treated as equivalent by the person skilled in the art. The disclosures in Italian Patent Application No. MO2007A000251 from which this application claims priority are incorporated herein by reference.

Where technical features mentioned in any claim are followed by reference signs, those reference signs have been included for the sole purpose of increasing the intelligibility of the claims and accordingly, such reference signs do not have any limiting effect on the interpretation of each element identified by way of example by such reference signs.

Claims

1. A system (10) for exchanging documents ( 1 1) in electronic form for managing purchases over one or more data communications networks (5), comprising a proprietary information management system for writing and managing documents, characterized in that said system comprises:

- at a station of a customer (1), means for defining a workflow (23) and rules in a proprietary electronic format;

- at said customer (1) station, means for converting said order, said workflow (23) and said rules into a first e-mail message (30); - at said customer (1) station, means for sending said first e-mail message (30) to at least one other station (40) of a recipient (2) via standard communication protocols, said at least one other station (40) being reached by at least one of said data communications networks (5); - at the supplier's station (40), means for extracting and forwarding a content of said first e-mail message (30) from said supplier station (40) to a remote Web server (50), which is connected to at least one of said data communications networks (5);

- at the Web server (50), means for converting said content into a second e-mail message and means for sending said second message to the customer's station (40).

2. The system according to claim 1 , characterized in that said data communications networks (5) comprise the Internet.

3. The system according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that said first and second e-mail messages (30) are in the Mime Multipart format, with a portion in HTML language or XML language.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein said content of the first message (30) is said portion in HTML or XML language.

5. The system according to one or more of the preceding claims, characterized in that said standard protocols comprise SMTP and POP/IMAP.

6. The system according to claim 1, further comprising, at the supplier station (40), means for:

— receiving said first e-mail message (30), displaying on-screen the received message in a user interface (26);

— amending and/or confirming said content of the first e-mail message (30).

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein said means for modifying and/or confirming the content of said first e-mail message (30) is any one among an e-mail application (56) or a viewer of Web pages written in HTML or XML or a Web browser, said content of said first e-mail message (30) comprising an address of said Web server (50) and an e-mail address associated with said customer (1).

8. The system according to claim 6, wherein said HTML or XML content is associated with a <post>-type function.

9. The system according to one or more of the preceding claims, wherein said Web server (50) comprises means for logging data related to each e-mail message (30) sent by the Web server (50) to the customer (1) station and to the content received from the supplier station (40).