Internet EDI and SMES

The growth of the Internet has allowed business organisations to participate in e -commerce. E-commerce can exist between business organisations i.e. business to business e -commerce, sometimes referred to as Internet EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), as well as between business and customer. Small and medium sized organisations (SMEs) do not generally participate in traditional EDI largely because they lack the technical and financial resources. However, the development of Internet technologies and the resulting paradigm shift from EDI to Internet EDI should enable SMEs to take advantage of o pen standards and attain the benefits of EDI. A pilot survey of SMEs in a local area in Scotland was undertaken to establish if any local businesses are participating in Internet EDI and to detail the business-to-business ecommerce methods employed. The initial pilot study response was too small to give clear results but raised some questions for future research.