Towards Supporting Interoperability in e-Invoicing Based on Semantic Web Technologies

Since the use of electronic invoicing in business transactions was approved by the EU back in 2002, its application in Europe has grown considerably. However, despite the existence of standards like EDIFACT or UBL, widespread take up of electronic invoicing has been hindered by the enormous heterogeneity of proprietary solutions. In this chapter, the authors present an approach towards addressing the interoperability problem in electronic invoice exchange, based on ontologies and Semantic Web technologies. The authors propose methods and provide usable tools that leverage the knowledge of users of electronic invoicing systems by empowering them to define correspondences between sample electronic invoice data and a formal model of electronic invoicing represented as networked ontologies. The chapter follows a learn-by-example approach where, based on such correspondences, networked ontologies serve as a semantic hub for large-scale transformation of e-invoice data between heterogeneous e-invoicing formats and models. The approach has been evaluated through the development of a reference implementation and its deployment in the pharmaceutical sector.