BASDA Announces New Electronic Business Initiative

The eBIS initiative – electronics Business Interchange Standard – will introduce an international standard business document interface for electronic business. The Association has set up a Working Party to develop a standard method of directly exchanging common business documents such as orders and invoices between business systems via e-mail or the Internet. ‘The biggest growth area in eCommerce is in business-to-business for placing orders, generating invoices and making payments,’ explained Dennis Keeling, Chief Executive of BASDA. ‘Most of the work for this has already been done by BASDA. We developed universal EDI document protocols in 1996 which allowed business systems in different companies to communicate directly. But that initiative was blocked by vested interests from the dominant EDI users, with their own messages, and the middleware developers, who provide specialist EDI software.’ ‘The BASDA eBIS initiative will make eCommerce simple and easy to use. Instead of expensive EDI software and Value Added Networks (VANS), SME’s will be able to use standard e mail and Internet forms for orders, invoices, payments, and even VAT and PAYE submissions.’