EDI and Inter - Firm Relationships : Toward a Standardization of Coordination Processes ? 1 EDI and Inter - Firm Relationships : Toward a Standardization of Coordination Processes ?

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) consists in the interchange of structured and standardized data between computers belonging to parties involved in a business relationship. The potential of EDI has been recognized since the mid-70’s when the dematerialization and the automation of document transmission and handling was identified as a source of major time and money savings. Indeed the transmission of electronic information through a telecommunications network is about 10,000 times faster than and one-sixth as expensive as the physical transmission of a paper document by the postal service. Moreover, the manual handling of a paper document by the sender and the receiver is slow, expensive, and generates many mistakes. In 1989, the COST 306 Committee estimated that the automation and dematerialization of inter-firm information exchanges could halve the generated administrative costs; the latter can be estimated at between 10% and 15% of the price of products. Such figures led to the interest in EDI and induced many economic actors — firms, public administrations, governments and international authorities — to support EDI developments and implementation.