EDI is the electronic transfer of business documents such as purchase orders or invoices
between computer systems of different enterprises based on an established norm/format
such as UN/EDIFACT or ANSI X.12 (Galileo Computing, 2003). EDI has now been used
for over 30 years for the exchange of business data (e.g., delivery notes and invoices as
mentioned above) between two application systems in a standardized and automated form
(Emmelhainz, 1993; Dressler, 2003). The benefits associated with traditional EDI include
cost reductions induced by rationalization and automation and shorter order processing
time (Deutsch, 1994).
Traditional EDI includes converters on both sides of the communication line. Data are normally
transferred between enterprises as illustrated in Figure 6. Therefore, on both sides, a
translation into formats understandable by different ERP systems such as SAP R/3 or JDEdwards
is to be guaranteed. Because of the early introduction and the market acceptance
of EDI systems in the 1980s, different standards exist for the description of EDI data (EDI
Comp., 2003).
Beck, Weitzel, and K�nig (2000) state that besides the alleged benefits, EDI is not as widespread
as many had expected. Presently only 5% of all companies that could benefit from
EDI actually use it (Segev et al., 1997) due to the considerably high costs for implementing
EDI systems (Swatman et al., 1997). New developments of innovative EDI solutions such
as Web-EDI or XML/EDI avoid the problems of traditional EDI technologies.
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