Encouraging SME Acceptance of EDI: An Educational Approach1

Telecommunications addresses the tyranny of distance for international and domestic trade communities by providing information linkages both internally and externally to an organisation. These global networks give firms the opportunity to gain strategic advantages such as the strengthening of trading partner relationships and the redesigning of internal procedures to improve overall efficiency and cost effectiveness. Many organisations more noteably small and medium-sized enterprises however, have been slow to adopt telecommunications and its enabled technologies (EDI in particular) due to a general lack of understanding of the benefits available from their effective utilisation. This paper describes the various benefits attributed to telecommunications and, more specifically, to EDI. The paper summarises many of the major factors which might be contributing to the slow rate of acceptance of this technology, despite the benefits which the business community stands to gain from its widespread adoption. The paper then argues that using laboratory-based teaching programmes might prove to be an effective way in which to alleviate this problem of EDI and telecommunications acceptance, particularly in the case of SMEs. 1 This paper was published in the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on EDI-IOS, Bled, Slovenia, 5-8 June, 1995, pp. 27-46.