The role of electronic data interchange in electronic commerce

Abstract

At the beginning of the third millennium, the world has experienced a new era. Rapid and extensive changes in all aspects have developed communications wider and faster. Commerce is not an exception in this regard and has widely and quickly changed as well. With the growth of internet and popularization of electronic commerce and lack of need to invest much in implementing electronic commerce for small and medium-sized enterprises and organizations, EDI users have been prompted to direct their business process flow towards electronic commerce and make use of it as a tool for changing organizations operating methods. In this process, not only are paper-based transactions eliminated, but also changes are emphasized to be made in the way organizations conduct transactions with their commercial parties which in turn will restructure processes within the organizations. Indeed, the optimal productivity and efficiency are achieved when this technology is implemented after complete investigation and analysis of intra-organizational processes and even after the implementation such processes should be constantly reviewed and restructured. This paper has introduced electronic data interchange and has studied its role in electronic commerce and its implementation restrictions.