In this use pattern, a manufacturer is looking for more than the ability to conduct transactions electronically with a fixed set of partners; the manufacturer needs a service that provides visibility to their inventory levels, so that the suppliers can manage their own product and inventory levels accordingly.
The manufacturer has many suppliers - around 2000 major suppliers and 250,000 other suppliers - and the set of supplier companies with which they do business is constantly changing.
The custom purchasing system has had disappointing take-up by the suppliers, and as a result the manufacturer continues to face large costs associated with the manual processes that it still uses with the vast majority of its suppliers. A major barrier to adoption of the new system by suppliers has been the cost of integrating supplier systems with the trading hub.
The current solution also has costs for the manufacturers. In particular, the use of leased lines is expensive, and the use of VPNs is difficult to manage when scaled to a large number of suppliers.
By using WSDL to describe the services, and by using web services standards to implement the services, you reduce the costs incurred by the manufacturer and suppliers: