I was in an client's meeting today and they were discussing how one of their batch processes has a dependency on data generated by supplier's batch process. The problem is that the client does not know when the supplier's process is complete so they can start their process. (The supplier's data is accessed via an API rather than a bulk file delivery.) The discussion went along the lines of
We know their process starts around 10 PM and takes about an hour to complete. So let's give it a couple of hours to finish, just in case it's slow that day, and we will start our process at, say, midnight.
I scream into the void. This kind inter-company data processing coordination is quite common. Common enough that I am still surprised there is no standard, or industry-specific, solution we use.