The World with XML

Most in-house legacy computer systems were created with the idea of bringing a company together. By integrating all the pieces of a company: HR with sales, business development with the warehouse and so on, a company could streamline operations. But these systems ran into problems with the advent of the web. Legacy systems were built to keep others out, not to let them in. So even though it made sense to allow vendors and suppliers in to streamline business, most companies simply haven't been equipped to do it. With the emerging XML standard, however, companies are finding they have a new chance to create systems that will communicate with almost any other across the Internet. XML is going to change the way companies communicate, both in-house and with outside companies. And it's already changed the fortunes of this week's company, MobShop.com. MobShop uses automated systems to integrate product demand to get lower prices. Just like you'd buy a ten-pound sack of sugar at Costco and save, MobShop is able to create interest groups that can swing lower per-unit prices by buying in volume. It's a complicated system. And one that requires a lot of communication with buyers and sellers as well as seamless, flawless and efficient integration between multiple systems. If that communication isn't there, the MobShop system just doesn't work. But MobShop is making it work by using XML - CEO Jim Rose explains why and how.

Who Needs to Talk to You?

Every business has different entities that would profit from integration into internal systems. For instance, your company may profit by allowing employees to order office supplies from vendors without having a human step in. With MobShop, vendors automatically create their own buy cycles and customers create demand cycles. Rose explains how a supply cycle works on the supplier side: "The way it would work is Supplier X is selling office chairs. They can dictate that the price is $300 for every chair for the first 100 chairs. For 101-150 chairs, the price goes down to $275. For every chair from 151-200, it goes down to $250. So the seller in the supply cycle sense is the one that's controlling the environment and also the one that's controlling the offer," Rose says. And controlling the time the deal is available or the quantity to be sold as well. "It could be that there are only 300 units available and once 300 units have been accounted for, the cycle will close. Or it could be that the cycle remains open for three days, and at the end of three days, however many offers have been made are then wrapped up and sent back to the supplier," he says. In many instances the supplier hasn't even built the product yet and is looking to leverage just-in-time manufacturing. "For suppliers, more often than not, the supplier is trying to determine if they should actually build a product - how much demand is in a channel for a certain product, if they're trying to liquidate goods, or if they're trying to extend a life cycle - a supplier would use a supply cycle format to be able to do those things," Rose says. By allowing external companies to use MobShop's systems, MobShop has created a business. What profits could you gain by letting others into your systems?

How XML Makes it Happen

MobShop's real feat is its content delivery engine, which allows partners to receive MobShop's information and plug it into a branded site. "The content delivery engine is basically a push, a feed that allows them to pull all the functionality of our software and put it inside of their site," Rose says. "It's XML, so all of the different components of a buy cycle - either a supply cycle or a demand cycle - are broken up into single independent bits. The developers or the engineers for an exchange can then decide, 'Here are the fifteen things I need to make this available and to make it make sense inside of my experience.' " MobShop's XML buy cycle system allows companies to communicate with buyers and still provide a branded experience. "Say someone wanted to run a supply cycle from IBM, and IBM was selling laptops. They would want access to what the product description is, what the specs are, potentially a picture. They would want to see what the prices are, what the volumes happen to be, what the timing is, and then ultimately decide if they wanted to join. They would take all of those components and put little tags inside of their site and those would then communicate back to our service, which would pull them onto their website," he says. "Customers are pretty sensitive about their brands, especially with something that's outwardly facing like our application, i.e., it's their customers that are actually using it. They want to ensure that it looks, tastes and feels just like the rest of their experience," he says. Thanks to XML, MobShop's clients can communicate seamlessly, pulling out just the bits of relevant information. That information can even be delivered inside a branded site. Is it magic? Well, almost. But with XML on the rise, it's a business magic smart professionals are going to see more and more often.