PROCEEDINGS 7 th ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON WORLD WIDE WEB APPLICATIONS

Herewith to testify that the papers accepted for the 7th Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications, 29-31 August 2005, Cape Town have been peer-reviewed by independent and external peer-reviewers. Abstract The Internet has revolutionized the capacity for the sharing of information and online transacting in the Business-to-Business (B2B) sector. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been the technology used during the pre-Internet (WWW) era. With the extensive use of the Internet new technologies such as the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) have emerged to easily describe and deliver rich structured data from any web application between B2B organizations. Businesses adopting e-commerce strategies today are faced with many decisions regarding available standard technologies to be used on their web-based applications. In making such decisions, businesses must ensure that these technologies are able to support the attainment of business objectives such as the delivery of satisfactory levels of electronic service quality (e-SQ). Several studies have focused on identifying metrics for measuring e-SQ; none of them have investigated how to make decisions regarding the adoption of technologies, such as XML, to attain improved levels of service quality. In light of this, this article examines web-based service quality, post-internet technologies (XML) and pre-internet technologies (EDI). The key research question that is addressed is: How does the use of a Web-based technology (XML) compare to a pre-internet technology (EDI) with regards to its impact on the delivery of e-SQ? In pursuance of this a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of technologies such as XML on web-based applications, to attain improved levels of service quality, is developed. The paper concludes with recommendations regarding the use of XML in the B2B environment.


Introduction
The emergence of online businesses in the late 1990's has created a platform for these businesses to be more competitive than those that are still transacting within traditional brick and mortar (BAM) environments.The application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to electronic commerce (e-commerce) began to change our ways of thinking as well as providing new venues for doing business (Timmers, 2000).Many companies thought that setting up a website was relatively easy (Cox and Dale, 2001) and they never gave much thought to aspects like website visibility, customer service, service-quality etc. when they were designing these sites.The biggest challenge that they faced was to continue to provide quality service over a website in the absence of personal interaction.
In the business-to-business (B2B) environment, inter-organisational information systems (IOIS) have been used since the 1970s to link one or more organisations to their customers or suppliers through private value added networks (VANs) such as electronic data interchange (EDI) (Archer and Yuan, 2000).With the extensive use of the Internet new technologies have emerged to improve the communication between businesses.One of the innovations is the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that has introduced a new way of easily describing and delivering rich structured data from any web application between B2B organizations.Various sources e.g.McFadden (2000) have anticipated the extensive use and adoption of XML technologies on web applications within businesses in the future because of its extensible features as compared to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML).
In addition to having to deal with the impact of new technologies, managers of ecommerce businesses also have to find ways of evaluating the effectiveness of the Information Systems (IS) deployed in their e-commerce businesses.Previous studies have identified several approaches to the measurement of IS effectiveness, such as Information Quality, Systems Quality, Organizational Benefit etc.Recently, the Service quality approach has emerged as a means of evaluating IS effectiveness (DeLone & McLean, 2003).Electronic Service Quality (e-SQ) has received much attention over the past few years (e.g.Parasuraman et. al. 2005;Yang & Fang, 2004;Zeithaml, 2002).Most of these studies have focused on the identification and development of metrics to measure the level of electronic service as perceived by the customer.However there is scant literature that deals with how new web-based technologies such as XML can be utilised to achieve acceptable service quality levels.
In light of this, this article examines web-based service quality, post-internet technologies (XML) and pre-internet technologies (EDI).The key research question that is addressed is: How does the use of a Web-based technology (XML) compare to a pre-internet technology (EDI) with regards to its impact on the delivery of e-SQ?In pursuance of this a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of technologies such as XML on web-based applications, to attain improved levels of service quality, is developed.The paper concludes with recommendations regarding the use of XML in the B2B environment.

E-service quality
Web-based service quality (hereinafter e-SQ) can be defined as the consumers' overall evaluation and judgment of the excellence and quality of e-service offerings in the virtual marketplace (Santos, 2003).In this article e-SQ is defined as giving expected service to other businesses, customers or clients over a website linked with underlying enabling technologies.Research into service quality in the BAM has been popular for more than two decades, but it is only recently that it has been applied to the e-commence environment (Santos, 2003;DeLone and McLean, 2003;Pather et al, 2004).E-SQ is the term used in the e-commerce environment as it measures how quality service is being given to customers or clients via a website.
Sometimes businesses have a different perception when it comes to expected service and perceived service.Service quality is one of the key factors in determining the success or failure of e-commerce (Yang, 2001).Despite the conceptual arguments regarding service quality, it is generally agreed in the literature that service quality is a multi-level and multi-dimensional concept that might mean different things to different people (Mersha and Adlakha, 1992;Dabholkar et al., 1996;Brady and Cronin, 2001).In contrast to their evaluation of traditional service offerings, customers are less likely to evaluate each subprocess in detail during a single visit to a Web site; rather they are likely to perceive the service as an overall process and outcome (van Riel et al., 2001).There are a number of different frameworks and dimensions for measuring e-SQ, one such study concluded by Yang (2001) describe the following seven dimensions which are aligned with the SERVQUAL instrument (Parasuraman et al, 1988): • Reliability -includes the correctness of order fulfillment, prompt delivery, and billing accuracy; this definition clearly excluding an information-only site.
• Responsiveness -includes prompt responses to customers' enquiries, calls, or e-mails (or responses to customers within a promised time frame); information retrieval; search speed; and search friendliness; • Access -includes the list of the company's street and e-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers, accessibility of service representatives, availability of chat room, bulletin boards, and other communication channels.
• Ease of use -can be related to an easy-to-remember URL address, well organised, well structured, and easy-to follow catalogues, site navigability, and concise and understandable contents, terms and conditions.
• Attentiveness -consists of individualised attention, personal thank you notes from online retailers, and availability of a message area for customer questions or comments.
• Credibility -refers to the business history of online retailers, special rewards or discounts, and referral banners on other Web sites.
• Security -includes security of personal information and minimal online purchase risks.
A brief overview of e-SQ and the dimensions associated with its measurement have been presented.In the following section traditional B2B data exchange will be examined viz.EDI.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Traditionally service quality has been measured in retail environments, where businesses strive to improve customer service.Although service quality has not been measured in B2B encounters, the purpose of this section is to present a review of traditional EDI so as to allow a comparison to be made with XML.Before the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW), businesses relied on EDI to exchange data and information.EDI is a traditional way of conducting e-commerce (Kaplan, 2002).EDI, like many technical terms in use today, has multiple meanings (Bass, 1989;Emmelhainz, 1990;Clarke, 2001) cited by Hsieh and Lin (2004): • Some users employed EDI in its generic sense to mean any exchange of data between two computer systems.Under this definition, a file copied to diskette and loaded into another computer would qualify as EDI.
• A more precise definition implies direct computer-to-computer communication of business transactions in a standard context-sensitive format (i.e. each computer understands the ''meaning'' of each field without requiring additional human interpretation).
• EDI is most commonly used to mean the exchange of information according to the standards defined by the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 committee via a commercial Value Added Network (VAN).
Traditional EDI is conducted using an automated system of B2B data exchange.The two most important areas of EDI are data interchange and electronic transfer of money.Data interchange is used for sending orders and invoices between companies; while electronic transfer of money is mainly used among banks.The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) organization has managed this since the 1970s (www.swift.com).The major goal of EDI is to replace paper documents with their electronic versions for reducing the time spent on printing, mailing and re-entering information.EDI links the computer processes, so that duplicate data entry is not necessary.EDI is an approach that can save costs and time and also can improve customer service (shorter delivery times).
Compared to the Internet, traditional EDI offers high security and safety measures because EDI runs on closed, private value added networks (VANs).The advantages of this are evident.However one of the disadvantages is that the number of trading partners is always limited to those who are connected to these VANs (Hasselbring and Weigand, 2001).Typical small businesses cannot afford VANs.EDI works by providing a collection of standard message formats and element dictionary in a simple way for businesses to exchange data via an electronic message.The traditional EDI was built when data communications were a lot more expensive, and when systems were primarily mainframe based.EDI represents the technology of its time (Kaplan, 2002).But with the advent of the Internet, communication between businesses became much easier and cheaper because business will now have to exchange and transact over an existing internet connection instead of paying for EDI expensive VANs.The Internet is the medium that utilises the latest technologies such as XML to communicate between businesses.

eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
XML is a meta-markup language that allows developers to easily describe and deliver rich, structured data from any web application in a standard, consistent way.It is also a global programming language used over the Internet.The idea was that XML would be a logical alternative for companies who couldn't afford EDI and the costly VANs (Kaplan, 2002).It is called extensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML, which is a single, predefined markup language.It is a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide World, intranets, and elsewhere (Smith, 2003).HTML is effectively, a presentation tool that tells a browser how to arrange text, graphics, and links on a screen (McFadden, 2000).HTML cannot support the content and logic that are needed for today's Web applications (Lim and Wen, 2002).The shortcomings of HTML can be illustrated with the following source code in figure 1.1, where the product catalog of a company can be simply represented on a website.One of the most important things missing is a mechanism for describing the data being presented (McFadden, 2000).XML is a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a language used to define markup languages (one language defined by SGML is HTML).XML, as is the case with HTML was created to specifically address the issues of writing documents for the Web.XML authors use elements bracketed by open and close tags.XML authors are not stuck with a fixed set of elements and entities.
In Figure 2.1 the source code shows the same XML product catalog entry that was represented in HTML.With XML, you can create your own elements, entities, and structural relationships to be used in your documents.(DeJesus, 2001;Hasselbring and Weigand, 2001;Coyle, 2002) Figure 2.

XML Source Code
When you write documents in XML, you write text files containing elements and entities that markup your content.However an XML document by itself cannot be displayed in a Web browser.A document type definition (DTD) defines the relationships of XML elements and entities as well as a specification for how the information in the document should appear or be displayed in a web browser.The DTD and XMLSchema also describe the structure of an XML document, so that the various elements and conversions used in a document can be specified and standardized (Taylor, 2003).This entails a list of elements and entities as well as their structural relationships.DTDs can be referenced with those that exist somewhere on the Web, or you can write the information that would be in the <TABLE BORDER=1> <TR><TH>Product ID</TH> <TH> Description</TH> <TH>Price</TH> </TR> <TR> <TD>12345 </TD> <TD>Encarta 2003 </TD> <TD>R499.99</TD></TR> </TABLE> <?xml version="1.0"?> <Product> <Id>12345</Id> <Description> Encarta 2003 </Description> <Price>R499.99</Price></Product> XML describe the content rather than the presentation of that content.By marking the meaning of the data itself with <Product> and avoiding formatting tags in the data, it is easier for a client application to search various individual servers for a product e.g.find all products that are less than R499 The data of this HTML code is embedded in the presentation, making the processing of data extremely difficult.when large amount of data are transmitted over the Web DTD right in your XML document.When a user employs some software application (such as a Web browser) to view XML documents, the elements and entities that are defined in the referenced DTDs are interpreted and displayed according to the behavior of an XML parser and XML processor (which interprets and translate the XML tags so that a browser presents them as a formatted web page) and the user's client software.You can define the look and feel of how the client software should display your document using a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL).Thus, the document's contents, the logical structure and element types possible in the document, and the appearance of the document, are all defined separately (Coyle, 2002).XML Document Object Model (DOM) is a programming interface that defines the way an XML document can be accessed.The eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language (XHTML) is widely used as an alternative to HTML; it is used to create web pages (Taylor, 2003).

Using XML for IS integration
XML can also be used as the major technique for integration of information systems, which provides the medium of information flow for message communication, data format, and business process automation.Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the base for message communication that uses XML to integrate legacy systems, regardless of these systems, programming language, operation platform or database.XML can be used to achieve the target of signal process portal over the Internet by the information exchange standard for message communication among systems, and also to envelop the remote process call (RPC) to require other systems or respond data for other systems' requirement (Yu and Chen, 2003).From the forgoing XML can therefore be viewed as viable alternative for web-based transacting between businesses.

The role of e-commerce technologies in a B2B environment
Many sales representatives have crossed their fingers with the hope that e-commerce will not take away their jobs.These sales representatives are very sceptical about the change that e-commerce will bring to their businesses and this scepticism has hindered the benefits and profit that the e-commerce will bring to their firms; their mentality is still based on the traditional way of doing things.However one study showed that adding e-business capabilities has helped companies increase the number of new customers overall and the number of accounts per salesperson, decrease cycle time, and boost direct sales (Sales & Marketing Management, 2000).Electronic commerce technologies include facilities such as interactive Web sites, electronic mail, and extranets to promote electronic communication ordering with suppliers, intranets to facilitate internal knowledge sharing, and EDI.B2B electronic commerce can reduce an organisation's costs in a number of ways.It reduces procurement costs, both by making it easier to find the lowest priced supplier and through efficiency gains.It is less costly to place an order online, and there are likely to be fewer errors in orders and invoicing (McIvor and Humphreys, 2004).The technologies such as XML have been used as glue when transferring information from the e-commerce system to the legacy system of the company.XML technologies have proven to be a cost effective mechanism as compared to EDI, as they use the existing Internet connection while EDI uses value added networks that are proven to be expensive.Cisco Systems reports that one-quarter of its orders had to be reworked because of errors in telephone and fax ordering system.When it switched to online ordering, the error rate fell to 2 per cent, saving the company $500 million (The Economist, 2000).
Research carried out by Aberdeen Group (1999) has shown that B2B e-commerce can lead to an average 5-10 per cent price reductions for products and services through lower material and service costs, reductions in acquisition and order fulfillment cycle times of 50-70 per cent, reductions in requisition processing costs of 70 per cent per order, and improved inventory management practices.Electronic intermediaries can bring together a large number of buyers and suppliers and act as a single gateway to a range of products and services (McIvor and Humphreys, 2004).From the foregoing there is little doubt of the positive benefits of e-commerce in the B2B sector.
Whilst there has been much speculation (and some limited evidence) of the benefits of ecommerce, little attention has been given to how technologies (like XML) can be harnessed to bring about these benefits.As indicated earlier the research question concerns how the use of XML impacts the service quality levels in a B2B sector.

XML & e-Service Quality
The previous sections have presented an outline of e-SQ, electronic data interchange, eXtensible Markup Language and the role of e-commerce technologies in a B2B environment.The research objective of this paper is to determine whether XML-based web pages are supportive of e-SQ factors that have been identified in the literature.The review of the literature indicated that there are ample studies that have examined the technology and capabilities of XML.However there is no assessment of how well it supports the attainment of business related objectives like improving service quality.
According to Morrison and Morrison (2003) XML-based Web pages use a variety of technologies to format and manipulate the data stored in XML files.Two approaches are available for formatting and manipulating data stored in XML files.The first of these is the server-side XML processing, where a conversion program runs on the Web server and extracts the data from the database and converts the retrieved data to an XML format.The other approach entails client-side XML processing; it converts the database data to an XML-formatted file on the Web server and then downloads the XML file to the client workstation.Figure 3 and figure 4 illustrate the server-side and client-side XML processing.Based on a study of e-SQ (Yang, 2001), the next section maps XML features to Yang's e-SQ factors in order to establish if the use of this technology could enhance the ability of businesses to improve e-SQ.The alignment of e-SQ features with XML and EDI is illustrated in table 1. Additionally EDI compatibility is compared with XML using e-SQ factors.Factors that are not relevant in the study will not be discussed.A substantial clarification on EDI and XML in table 1 is taken from (Lim and Wen, 2002;Taylor, 2003;Hsieh and Lin, 2004;Hasselbring and Weigand, 2001).Thus the synthesis provided in table 1 provides some insight to the following: (i) The impact of XML on e-SQ dimensions as identified by Yang (2001) (ii) XML usage is compared to EDI to establish if the use of XML is indeed more advantageous with respect to e-SQ than the use of EDI.

A Conceptual framework for technology evaluation
Figure 5: A framework for evaluating technology effectiveness to improve levels of service Based on the research literature and the mapping of XML technology and EDI with e-SQ factors, a conceptual framework for the evaluation of technology effectiveness to improve levels of service is developed in this section.This theoretical framework is being developed using the above highlighted issues on e-SQ and web-based technologies.
Figure 5 illustrates a framework being developed to relate e-service quality and technology effectiveness to achieve service satisfaction, technology satisfaction and further deliver customer expected service leading to customer satisfaction which in turn will have a positive impact of creating customer loyalty.
Each of the model's dimensions are described below: i. Evaluation dimension E-SQ is regarded as one of the key factors in identification and development of metrics to measure the level of satisfaction of users of the system.It is therefore a key component in evaluating the impacts of technologies in ensuring improved levels of service for businesses involved in B2B environment.E-SQ goals should be based on customer standards and expectations rather than on what business wants.It is imperative to note that the web-based technological status of a firm does have an effect on the level of importance levels that the firm places on the advantages of e-commerce.For organizations to effectively deploy web based technologies that will attain improved levels of service quality, it is valuable for these businesses to merge E-SQ and technology effectiveness determinants as their evaluation criteria to ensure that the organisation will perform similar activities better than rivals perform them.

ii. Action Dimension
The action dimension plays an important role in ensuring that the metrics used as a benchmark in assessing e-SQ and technological effectiveness determinants are actionable in that they meet all technological and service quality requirements.The service and technological satisfaction means that underlying technologies should support specific requirements of e-SQ.This dimension requires that managers, strategic alliance and trading partners conduct a feasibility study to ensure that the technology and service quality alignment analysis done during the evaluation dimension will lead to customer satisfaction and return business.

iii. Expectation and Positive Dimensions
The authors suggest that robust technologies in an e-commerce environment (B2C or B2B) have a positive impact on how customers perceive service.It is generally perceived that the more reliable the technology the more frequent it will be utilised to facilitate data and transacting interchange.It is important to mention that the quality of service and effectiveness of a technology is tied to the expectations and perceptions of consumers and complete customer satisfaction is only possible when there is full information about customer requirements in the hands of all and everyone who has influence on how they are met (Asher, 1989).Harrison (1991) indicates that most management teams spend disproportionate time studying financial data and give too little attention to non-financial performance measures, which dictate financial performance.He continues to suggest that customer service measures must be used as a basis to develop and track the progress of well conceived plans to continuously improve all aspects of customer service.Customer loyalty can be achieved when all the prominent service quality and technological effectiveness factors have exceeded customer expectations resulting in return of business.

Conclusion
The synthesis of literature (see table 2) allows us to conclude the following: • The use of XML (Post-Internet technology) is advantageous over EDI (Pre-Internet technology) to achieve improved service quality in the areas of reliability, responsiveness and ease of use.• The use of XML to attain e-SQ improvements has been identified in the following ways: (1) Reliable Data Interchange XML will allow trading partners to easily exchange, describe and deliver rich, structured data in a standard and consistent way.XML will also make the process of sending and receiving the data between trading partners easy, valid and reliable because the technology can easily represent both tabular data (such as relational data from a database or spreadsheets) and semistructured data (such as a Web page or business documents) among heterogeneous systems and platforms.
(2) Better Responsiveness XML is a web-based driven technology, the transfer of data is quick between trading partners.This will lead to quick and better response to customer's queries, comments, purchase orders etc.
(3) Ease of Use The use of XML user-defined tags is regarded as an ease of use technique, because it provides optimization for easy programming.The user-defined tags are a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the web.These user-defined tags make it easy to navigate through XML catalogues.
(4) Increase buyers credibility XML will make buyers gain trust in the supplier's business processes because of the technologies reliability, responsiveness, and ease of use when navigating through their catalogues.
(5) Security Security is one of the key determinants of ensuring confidence and trust within trading partners.XML has security controls (for example XML encryption, XML signatures etc) that ensure secure data interchange between businesses.
With the use of XML technologies in most B2B organizations it is evident that XML is a low-cost alternative to EDI.The preliminary indications show that this technology has proven to support e-SQ features in the following ways: data interchange, response to customer queries and comments, ease of use in navigating through XML catalogues and information security features during data interchange.Furthermore XML has a potential to reduce inventory, improved time-to-time market, reduce transaction costs, and conduct business with a broader network of supply chain partners.
With EDI, supply chain partners are restricted to those who are using the value added networks limiting business growth and profit.One of the disadvantages of EDI is that each time a trading partner is added; new software has to be written to translate between the sender's data for the recipient and they cannot change at the same speed as the business environments surrounding today's organizations do.EDI has proven to be a reliable technology for the past decade, but it is still expensive, thus excluding small businesses.
Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) will not be able to afford the expensive implementation of EDI's value added networks because of their limited budgets.That will result in them being left out in the buyer-seller relationships.The XML technology promises to be a technology that can be afforded by both SMMEs and large organizations because it uses existing Internet connections.More and more of SMMEs who cannot alter into a web based supplier chain will be left out.
Lastly the conceptual framework presented a basis on how technology measurement scales can be developed.It is important to note that the technology measurement scales can be effectively valuable when it is done in conjunction with the strategic alliance and trading partners in order to assess investment justification in respect of the adoption of ecommerce systems.

Future Work
This paper provides a preliminary indication that XML is supportive of e-SQ factors in a B2B environment.The future plans of this study include: an empirical study to determine how technologies such as XML can be harnessed to improve e-SQ.

Figure
Figure 3: Server-side XML processing

Table 1 .
Alignment of e-service quality factors with EDI and XML