The Importance of EDI Education: A Survey of Australian SMEs

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly slow to adopt EDI for such reasons as the perceived high cost of implementing EDI, the lack of willing trading partners, the evolutionary nature of the document translation standards and the lack of awareness of the benefits of EDI. Despite a growing understanding of the factors which influence SME adoption of technologies such as EDI, research which generates insight into the importance of education for addressing the EDI acceptance problem is still limited. This paper reports the results of a survey of Australian SMEs which investigated the barriers they believe hinder or prevent their adoption of EDI; and the educational approaches which respondents would prefer when learning about the business potential of EDI in their firm. The findings of the survey corroborate those of similar studies which show that a lack of knowhow and awareness are major barriers to EDI adoption — a problem which can be addressed through education. The results also suggest that SME owner/managers prefer educational approaches which provide information and assistance specific to their needs; and which gives them the opportunity to experiment with real EDI solutions so that they can see first-hand how this technology can be used in their own organisation.