The Status Quo and The Future Of EDI - Results Of An Empirical Study

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been used in businesses for about 30 years to reduce the costs of document processing and, in general, to achieve strategic business advantages made possible by shorter business process cycle times. The variety of different industry-specific and national EDI standards makes it difficult for businesses to decide which standard to use. Additionally, many companies do not participate in EDI networks due to the high costs associated with traditional EDI or do so only because of pressure from strong business partners. The Internet and new technologies surrounding it offer new ways to take advantage of the benefits of electronic business to business communication at a fraction of the costs. Especially for SMEs a comparably low-cost WebEDI solution can reduce entry barriers to business networks of larger enterprises or increase the chance to remain in existing relationships. We introduce a prototype that serves as a first effort to demonstrate the potentials and gain practical experience in the field of WebEDI. It becomes clear that running Internet-based EDI solutions based on open Internet standards are technically possible already.