A survey of electronic data interchange (EDI) in the top public companies in Canada

This paper reports on management views of the implementation, use, and benefits of EDI systems among the top 4000 public companies in Canada. The market penetration of EDI is still growing linearly. Our best estimate is that 64% of the top public companies in Canada had an EDI system as of 1999. The most popular reasons for adopting EDI in decreasing order are improved customer service, improved supplier relationship, reduced clerical error, and competitive advantage. With the exception of the latter, the first three of these are viewed also as important impacts of EDI after implementation. There were no differences between smaller and larger companies (defined as having annual sales less than or greater than $500 million, respectively). Respondents generally felt that the benefits of EDI outweighed the costs of implementation. In-house staff rather than external consultants were used predominantly in the design and implementation of EDI systems. The most common problems encountered were inadequacy of resources to implement the systems, deciding which activities to include, and training. Much less common were difficulties in selling the concept to different parts of the organization.