Enabling customer-driven processes in value-added networks using an architecture for e-collaboration

Different customer requirements in combination with technological advances caused mainly by the Internet enable new or improved customer-driven business processes. The management of such processes requires a deep but flexible integration of enterprises. In this context new forms of cooperation like e-collaboration, describing the efficient and effective collaboration of participants in a value-added network, arise. In order to manage customer-driven business processes across such networks, existing concepts and tools for business process management need to be adapted and extended. For that purpose an e-collaboration architecture is presented in this paper, which shows how cross-enterprise, customer-driven processes can be planned, implemented and controlled in a value-added network. Another important building block is the life-cycle-model that serves as a guideline for the process-oriented creation and operation of cooperations towards a common customer-driven production and bundling of goods and services