Why we should embrace XML standard, and soon
By Brian Carroll, E-business editor -- Furniture Today, November 11, 2001
I can spell the future in just three letters — XML.
What is XML? It's an emerging Internet technology, the basis for electronic document exchange standards, and a platform-independent coding protocol. In short, it's the Rosetta stone, the Internet code-breaker that can serve to cut a lot of cost out of our very inefficient furniture supply chain.
It's time for the industry to embrace extensible markup language.
The Furniture Industry Data Exchange is an ad-hoc, pan-industry group attempting to establish XML-based electronic document standards for Internet-enabled e-business practices. FIDX has five notches on its gunbelt already — five standards submitted to the United Credit Council for approval — covering such things as purchase orders and acknowledgments.
But agreeing to and, therefore, establishing the standards is only half the battle. Adoption is the second and decisive half.
With a handful of business-to-business exchanges still on the horizon, including ones from FurnishNet, the National Home Furnishings Assn., Furndex and whatever will become of RetailMetro's abandoned exchange, the time to agree upon and begin adoption of XML-based document standards is now. If we want to avoid overlaps, gaps and barriers in networked supply chains, XML must be ramped up. Rekeying and re-entering needs to stop.
In many industries, XML already is transforming Web sites from mere online catalogs to collaboration tools for activities such as product design, production optimization and supply chain coordination. Bill Gates is pretty excited about XML. Ditto for Apple's Steve Jobs and the folks at Cisco Systems, among others.
Picture for a moment a world in which each piece of furniture is labeled in one system one time, along with all its identifying information — price, SKU number, dimensions. In this XML-defined world, that data goes out to retailers, trading partners and suppliers and is used as is by receiving computer systems.
I realize I'm a journalist, whose tools are words, and not an IT professional, whose tools are sophisticated software, hardware, middleware, shareware and who-knows-what-elseware packages, each with its own glossary of terms and annual user group conventions.
But, judging by my weekly reading diet of Business Week, The Industry Standard and a host of other publications, XML already is a viable framework to solve critical business issues. It is not a panacea. And it will take several years to see direct fiscal impact. It is why the work of FIDX and the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn. IT division, among other groups, is so vital.
Let's tear down the departmental fences and knock down the tower of computer Babel. Let's end the mind-numbing talk about B2B and begin automating our archaic business practices. Let's join the World Wide Web Consortium, the United Nations' International Standards Organization, and the 21st century by hardwiring the industry for the future.
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