1. Samuil Angelov, Paul Grefen Computer Science Department Information Systems Group University of Twente Automated Contract Handling sangelov@cs.utwente.nl www.cs.utwente.nl/~sangelov grefen@cs.utwente.nl www.cs.utwente.nl/~grefen

2. 2 Overview Context B2B contracts Electronic contracts Automation with electronic contracts Research goal Research steps Questions

3. 3 Context Business Contracts Business-to-Business domain Service consumer/supplier paradigm Dynamic partner relations Classical and neoclassical contracts A contract is a legally enforceable agreement, in which two or more parties commit to certain obligations in return for certain rights [Rei89]

4. 4 B2B Contracts Contracts guarantee rights prescribe obligations increase mutual trust form the foundation of business relations in a market Contract problems – human beings incur high costs for contract establishment and management slow for dynamic and rapidly changing business situations

5. 5 Automation Through Electronic Contracts Electronic contracts should: lower establishment and management costs speed up and improve contract establishment and management Offer new opportunities: extend company reach (e.g. no geographical restrictions) micro-contracting

6. 6 What to Automate With Electronic Contracts? Automate contract establishment negotiation,elaboration Automate contract enactment service execution, contract management InformationalPre-contractualContractualEnactment Contracting phases:

7. 7 What Is New With Electronic Contracts? New data to be included in contracts New machine readable representation is required New business set up dynamic and flexible relations faster execution of processes

8. 8 Contract Contents Generally: Exchanged values Service to be delivered Reward Provisions Prescribe behavior, procedures and guarantees for certain situations Define terms, conditions, formulas, etc. Provisions Values

9. 9 Automation With Electronic Contracts (Contract Establishment) Elaboration of contracts must be automated to a certain extent. Contracts should be automatically processable Structuring of an electronic contract natural language formal language contract template

10. 10 Automation With Electronic Contracts (Contract Enactment –1) Specification and alignment of activities performed by the parties formal specification appropriate representation in the e-contract An enactment architecture that handles contract enactment

11. 11 Automation With Electronic Contracts (Contract Enactment - 2) Views on process specifications I1I2I3I4 Internal view E1E3 External View 1 E2

12. 12 Three-level Framework logical process external process project internal process map service consumerservice supplier

13. 13 Automation With Electronic Contracts (Contract Enactment – 3, Management) Parallel to the contract execution module, contract management is required. Contract monitoring monitoring of service delivery monitoring of provisions Notification of parties Contract enforcement Process control

14. 14 Automation With Electronic Contracts Simplified contract enactment architecture Mapper Enactor Monitor Internal Enactment Architecture Notifier…

15. 15 Main Research Goal To elaborate a contract enactment architecture that allows sophisticated contract enactment, with flexible contract management (based on cooperation support services). To elaborate the required mappings, between the external and logical processes.

16. 16 Research Steps - 1 Work done Extensive survey over the project, papers and standards in this field A framework for electronic contracting support Work in progress A contracting process model

17. 17 Research Steps - 2 Future work Refinement of the contract enactment processes A contract model, contract language Identification of contract enactment requirements on the contracting processes and contract content. General contracting architecture, contract enactment architecture with flexible contract management

18. 18 Standards ebXML WSDL WSFL … Standards aim at fundamental problems. Contracting is a special case.

19. 19 Questions

20. 20 Contacts Paul Grefen www.cs.utwente.nl/~grefen Samuil Angelov www.cs.utwente.nl/~sangelov University of Twente