Hi Chris

WS only make sense if the vendors build a system to communicate back to you,
on the other hand

You can automate the response as well and then automatically responding to
it.

I am not sure what this e-mail contains.

Is it the reply to the e-mail which constitute a confirmation or contents to
the e-mail?

The above options can be automated removing the manual labor part from the
equation.

You can most certainly create a WS which will allow these vendors to confirm
the order. It is like giving them a public API that they can use to confirm
the order, but this still means they initiate the contact with your service.

henk

The only issue I see is with the variable nature of text email.  The reply
emails may not always be in a format that you can parse correctly.  Possibly
a better solution may be to put up a web page that would allow the confirm.
The email would contain a link the web page and maybe pre-fill it with the
required information.  If you do want to use email, you could have an NT
service poll an email inbox for specific emails and process the body as
needed.  Then post info back into the DB as required.