B2X Supports “Business to Everything” for X12 Stakeholders
Understanding how B2X and X12 work together can sometimes be confusing. Here are the nuts and bolts breaking down the complementary role B2X plays to support the needs of X12 members and implementers in the emerging “Business-to-Everything” environment.
Who is B2X?
A subcommittee of X12, B2X explores the technical, business, and other needs supporting current standards and next-generation solutions for organizations focused on electronic “Business-to-Everything.” To achieve its objective, B2X subcommittee members provide a secure forum for cross-industry collaboration to freely discuss, recommend and introduce innovative technologies that, for example, support emerging digital formats. B2X also leverages and promotes the expansive X12 vocabulary of data elements and constructs, which are used in standards development for the electronic interchange of business transactions. Businesses and developers are encouraged to engage with X12’s substantial body of knowledge and work products, via modern business tools and applications, to build long-term success.
The B2X Vision
B2X envisions a future where all cross-industry organizations use established and innovative technologies via a proven model of unified solutions to seamlessly exchange business transactions in modern-day ecommerce. These technologies benefit organizations of all sizes by powering seamless data exchange with trading partners as well as moving data efficiently through internal processes.
The Value of X12 and B2X
Manually entering and moving data electronically between different B2B systems is a complex and arduous process to manage and especially if the right technology and connectivity framework are not in place. Further complicating the process are integrating and managing the multiple sets of requirements and system information ─ all essential for successful bidirectional communication ─ requiring the use of many valuable resources readily available in today’s sophisticated technology landscape.
As members of X12, hundreds of developers and business representatives enjoy access to the organization’s expansive meta data repository in the form of vocabulary, language, and standards that are used daily by millions of organizations worldwide. Those organizations manage B2B system and data synchronization including moving data assets in large scale. For example, conventional business documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, purchase order acknowledgments, and advanced ship notices are among hundreds exchanged and supported by X12 Standards.
Additionally, X12 members benefit from a host of other activities: involvement in standards development, participation in meetings and conferences, access to draft and new publications, and professional networking and visibility opportunities. These benefits enable representatives to contribute and gain first-hand knowledge from peers with successful standards development and implementation experiences for future initiatives.
Using X12’s expansive standardized vocabulary with available technologies ensures that interoperability is easier to implement and maintain. Organizations can leverage their EDI investment with X12’s cross-industry transaction and metadata standards to translate EDI information into other well-known syntaxes, such as JSON, XML, RDF and CSV, that provide access to the specific information needed for different systems.
Champions of Successful Data Exchange
The B2X subcommittee’s model continually reinforces X12’s commitment to incorporating proven and emerging technologies into its 40-plus years’ body of standards work. B2X’s meetings provide a forum for its members to discuss, develop, and maintain recommendations ongoing to address changing business interoperability needs.
B2X members exemplify X12’s goals of advancing consensus-driven interoperability standards. Their dedicated work inspires others to join them addressing newfound challenges to ease system-to-system translation and communication.
To get involved in X12’s B2X subcommittee, email info@x12.org.
Authored by: Rick Flaute, Chair of the Business to Everything (B2X) Subcommittee