Managing Business Relationships in E-services Using Business Commitments

With the rapid advancement of e-service technology, there is a need to manage business relationships among business entities such as service providers, service consumers, and internal departments. In this paper, we have proposed a novel approach to business relationship management using business commitments and associated business commitment hubs. Business commitments are commitments related to business issues such as service levels in service agreements, and terms and conditions in procurement contracts. The concept of business commitments has captured the essence of business relationships in e-services. Based on case studies, we have envisioned the need of establishing a business commitment hub to centrally manage the external relationships with trading partners and the internal relationships with internal departments. A language called Business Commitment Language (BCL) has been proposed to specify business commitments. These business commitments are used to monitor and control the execution status of e-services. Conceptually, the business commitment hub has two related subsystems: the active subsystem and the dashboard subsystem. The active subsystem responds to business events received from business entities. The dashboard subsystem visually displays the key data and the execution status of business commitments.