Business-Driven Design of Transaction Services

Companies function within a complicated context of multiple suppliers, ever more demanding customers, finan- cial institutions, tax departments and so on. Interaction between companies appears as complicated transactions — messages of a certain structure exchanged according to certain procedures. In their relation to others, compa- nies require cost-effectiveness, quality of service and flexibility in products and processes. Transaction services — ICT services for electronic transactions — applied in networked enterprises, help to fulfil these requirements and are in fact indispensable. However, business transactions are diverse — they differ from company to company — and ever changing. Current ICT technology fails to support the diversity and flexibility required. We suggest an approach — called Rapid Service Development — that allows for flexible integrated modelling, analysis and deployment of trans- action services within networks and chains of organisations. This approach stretches from the definition of cross- company co-operation to the actual implementation within a single design paradigm. Re-use of knowledge, im- plementation components, and best practices are key elements in our approach.