Unified solution for procurement integration and B2B stores

Enterprise suppliers are faced with increasing complex tasks of enabling B2B stores to serve their enterprise customers for direct purchases and to support a large number of protocols in order to interoperate with various procurement systems. In this paper, we present a unified B2B solution that separates the integration process into two protocol-dependent and independent tasks with a 2-tier architecture to simplify the support of commerce functions for diverse access points. The first tier B2B gateway system handles all protocol related tasks such as handshaking with external networks and message format conversion. The second tier commerce engine executes commerce related tasks and provides protocol-independent shopping and ordering support for the B2B stores. Using a single sign-on mechanism and a unified shopping cart format in the commerce engine, our solution has streamlines the administrative processes associated with supporting and boarding new B2B buyers into the commerce engine.