Description
Information Exchange (IE) in supply chain is a very important aspect that affects inter-organizational relationships. Our focus here is business documents which may consist of invoices, purchase orders, shipping warnings and notifications. A data standard is anything that defines how the information should be encoded.
Early 1970s introduced Electronic Data Interchange, or EDI as the main standard used for the digital interchange of business documents utilising EDIFACT as a text-based standard. Besides EDIFACT, other standards such as XML have arisen leveraging Internet and Cloud Computing technologies.
There are many XML dialects and amongst them, UBL, the Universal Business Language defined by OASIS Open, offers a royalty-free library of standard XML business documents supporting the digitisation of the commercial and logistical processes for domestic and international supply-chains such as procurement, purchasing, transport, logistics, intermodal freight management, and other supply-chain management functions. UBL has also become foundational to a number of efforts in the transport and logistics domain, including the European Common Framework (European Commission), DTTN (Port of Hong Kong), TradeNet (Port of Singapore), Electronic Freight Management (US), and Freightgate (globally). In 2014 the European Commission declared UBL 2.1 was officially eligible for referencing in tenders from public administrations (one of the first non-European standards to be so recognised).
Resources
UBL
A video that explains the UBL standard in detail is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsyapRtjUu8&ab_channel=OASISOpen
EDIFACT
More information on the EDIFACT standard can be obtained at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94o8PbY3bs&ab_channel=TechEDI
FAQ
Where can I find information on UBL?
Details about the UBL standards are available from the UBL Web site, arranged into different version. For example, version 2.4 is available here: Universal Business Language Version 2.4
More information on the EDIFACT standard can be obtained at: What is EDIFACT ? | EDIFACT Overview in EDI Technology | Concept of EDIFACT
If you need information specifically on UBL e-invoicing refer to the FAQ in our article on e-Invoicing.