Distributed document transformation for electronic business to business transactions

A server computer system for the exchange of procurement documents, the server computer system comprising:

• a community rules identification module configured to identify a set of community-specific rules for a selected community specifying, for a procurement document to be transmitted, allowed document types and transformation rules;
• a plug-in generator module, communicatively coupled with the community rules identification module, and configured to generate a procurement document transformation plug-in to be distributed to each of a plurality of computing devices associated with the selected community and located remotely from the server computer system, the plug-in for installation at the each of the plurality of computing devices for use to locally transform the allowed document types according to the transformation rules;
• and
• a distribution module, communicatively coupled with the plug-in generator module, and configured to:
• identify at least a subset of the plurality of computing devices in the community;
• and
• identify a set of data including the procurement document transformation plug-in for distribution to the at least a subset of the plurality of computing devices.

A method for the exchange of procurement documents, the method comprising:

• receiving, from a remotely located server computer system, a set of data including a procurement document transformation plug-in, the plug-in for installation to locally transform procurement documents from a first document type to a second document type for transmission;
• installing the procurement document transformation plug-in;
• identifying a procurement document for transmission to a peer computing device;
• transforming, using the locally installed plug-in, the identified procurement document from the first document type to the second document type;
• and
• transmitting the transformed procurement document directed to the peer computing device.