Implementing Electronic Data Interchange: An Economic Perspective

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is an emerging automated interorganizational information system with a focus on facilitating various business transactions. Using EDI, the trading partners perform inter-firm, computer-to-computer exchanges of business documents. Although there are many widely cited benefits of implementing EDI and the level of EDI deployment has grown relatively rapidly in recent years, the diffusion speed of EDI internationally has nevertheless failed to achieve the level predicted by many industry experts. In Taiwan, the progress has been achieved mainly via large-scale projects sponsored by our government. Based on a simple framework, I raise and discuss some economic issues that may speed or impede the adoption of EDI. The exposition of the paper is drown primarily from implications derived from the exposition are provided.