B2BProzesse

B2BProzesse, or business-to-business processes, describe the workflows and practices that enable commercial exchange between organizations rather than between a business and final customers. They cover end-to-end cycles such as supplier selection and procurement, order fulfillment, contract management, invoicing and payment, and after-sales support. Compared with B2C processes, B2B workflows typically involve multiple stakeholders, longer sales cycles, negotiated terms, and sometimes customized configurations.

Common process families include procure-to-pay (P2P), order-to-cash (O2C), source-to-contract, supplier relationship management, and product lifecycle collaboration. P2P comprises supplier onboarding, purchase orders, invoicing and reconciliation; O2C covers quote or contract, order, shipment or delivery, invoicing, and cash collection. Contract management focuses on terms, renewals, compliance and performance metrics. Across these processes, data accuracy, interoperability, and clear governance are essential to ensure smooth handoffs between purchasing, finance, logistics and operations.

Technology and standards play a central role in B2BProzesse. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) systems and business process management (BPM) tools are commonly used, often with electronic data interchange (EDI) and application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable system-to-system communication. Standards such as XML, EDIFACT and PEPPOL facilitate cross-border and cross-system data exchange and invoicing.

Impact and trends include digitalization, automation, and expanded collaboration with suppliers and partners. Key challenges are data quality, security, privacy, and integration complexity, which demand strong data governance, master data management, and clearly defined service-level agreements.