A GENERIC PROCESS MODELLING APPROACH FOR INTEROPERABLE E-BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS Aikaterini Maria Sourouni, Sotirios Koussouris, Yannis Charalabidis, Dimitris Askounis National Technical University of Athens Iroon Polytechniou st, Zografou-Athens, 157 73, Greece Kostas Kalaboukas SingularLogic Al. Panagouli & Siniosoglou strs, 142 34 N. Ionia, Greece ABSTRACT Recent research has given much attention to the problem of interoperability in various business domains; however the issue of interoperability in heterogeneous business domains – Enterprises, Governmental and Banking Institutions of different countries (cross-border) or Enterprises of different interests (cross-sector) - still remains a big challenge to tackle. This paper presents a generic process modelling approach for interoperable e-business transactions carried out mainly by Small and Medium Enterprises. According to this approach core models are constructed taking into account state-of-the art notations and methodologies which facilitate the Application-to-Application interconnection and the automated business documents exchange between enterprises, governmental and banking institutions. These models cover not only national or sector specific business domain transactions but also cross-border and cross-sector processes, which imply different requirements, as beyond differences in the execution way, different legal rules and data exchange are also present. The process modelling methodology is briefly presented, a complete list of the examined transactions is given and generic models are constructed, followed by a thorough analysis of the findings. KEYWORDS E-business, Process Modelling, Interoperability, Transactions. 1. INTRODUCTION During the last years there has been substantial technological progress in the area of e-Business. However, despite the fact of e-Business evolution, the adoption of new internet-based technologies in the business environment is still limited, especially in the sector of small and medium (SMEs) or very small (VSEs) enterprises [Androutsellis 2005]. In parallel, the to-date efforts for developing and adopting e-Business solutions has been targeted more towards the area of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) of same interests–same business sector– area transactions and not so vitally towards the heterogeneous domain area addressed by this paper. This area comprises the Business to Business (B2B), Business to Government (B2G) and Business to Intermediaries (B2I) –such as Banks and Public Insurance Institutions– transactions between Entrepreneurial, Governmental and Banking Organizations of different countries (cross- border) or of different interests/operation domains (cross-sector). Interoperability is defined as “… the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged”. Thus achieving Interoperability is considered as the key factor which will drive e-Business to the next level by offering fully automated transactions that will be carried out without the need of any further actions; it will indicate the final adoption of e-Business in heterogeneous business domains (cross-border / cross-sector business domains). The present paper derives from a thorough research in the European business environment regarding the most common business transactions carried out mainly by European SMEs. A list of the common B2B, B2G and B2I transactions used by enterprises of different sectors and countries, has been formed, in accordance IADIS International Conference e-Commerce 2007 75