The integration of small and medium sized companies into co-modal supply chains requires three essential capabilities:

• The transport & logistics services offered by providers must be visible and easy to use by their clients as part of co-modal door-to-door transport chains.
• Interactions between stakeholders must be easily established at a cost affordable to all.
• Organisations already able to communicate electronically using existing solutions and standards like UN/CEFACT or UBL standards should not be obliged to replace their existing investments.

The DiSCwise project makes use of a Common Framework for ICT in Transport & Logistics.The 'Common Framework' enables interoperability in co-modal transportation. It consists of roles, business processes, ontology and messages to support interoperability in the domains of logistics demand & supply, supply chain security & compliance, and cooperative traffic management systems.

The Common Framework enables companies to exchange data and share processes with other companies. It is not a software program, but rather a set of specifications and guidelines that allow interaction between the different data exchange systems used by clients and providers of transport & logistics services. The Common Framework can be used by IT staff to adapt their in-house systems to exchange data adequately.

The DiSCwise project builds on the 'Common Framework' to allow Transport & Logistics Service users, including SMEs, to more easily use sustainable transport alternatives. Making the services available via a web interface or at low cost integration provides them with a choice of transport alternatives and contributes to a more competitive transport & logistics marketplace.

Using interoperability standards and a web-based collaboration platform, the boundaries between clients and providers of logistics services are overcome. The interoperability standards hold the necessary information to agree on the planning, booking and execution of transport & logistics services, whereas the collaboration platform makes it possible to connect clients and providers, in particular SMEs, with minimal integration effort.