To be competitive, EDI was traditionally the choice of companies who sought speedy transactions, accurate information exchange and cost savings. EDI can offer effective management of your supply chain, supporting initiatives like JIT ("Just In Time") manufacturing and ECR (Efficient Consumer Response), and was the preferred means of maximising the efficiency of exchanging documents (orders, invoices etc.), within your trading community and across enterprise boundaries. EDI enables the application-to-application exchange of information, and removes the need for human intervention.

EDI is widely used today, as the EDI standards bodies continue to provide up to date message versions. EDI still successfully delivers:

• Reduced costs of communications
• Reduced manual processing costs
• Business survival - some large companies make EDI a pre-requisite to doing business.

The Internet Age
However, the Internet has revolutionised the way organisations do business, organisations need to move from EDI to B2B to remain competitive within today's marketplace. B2B encompasses the exchange of business information in the most appropriate manner, irrespective of trading partner size or technical capability. Internet technologies support the complete business process, improving the efficiency of the exchange of transactions by EDI and enabling the sharing of information and knowledge throughout the community.

From EDI to B2B
In view of the new model for trading introduced by the Internet, organisations are seeking to consolidate their existing EDI requirements, improving efficiencies through using the Internet rather than VANs as the communications method, and are implementing an infrastructure to support B2B. EDI provides a controlled and effective means for organisations to exchange business transactions, such as orders and invoices, with their major trading partners. Adopting a B2B strategy enables an organisation to move from traditional batch processing to an online environment, facilitating dynamic trading and the exchange of all types of business information. EDI therefore becomes a component of B2B, alongside Internet standards such as XML as part of a complete B2B model.