REPORT

E-Business Standards in Germany -- Assessment, Problems, Perspectives (04/2003)
216 pages (Language: German)
Topic: Supply Management & E-Business

Summary

E-business fundamentally changes not only companies’ business processes, but also the value chains in which companies operate. Greater automation speeds up business processes and makes them more efficient, promising productivity gains – and greater prosperity – both now and in the future.

The essence of e-business is using information technology to support business processes. For this to work, however, transactions and information relevant to business must depicted (or ‘mapped’) electronically in ways that enable an exchange between companies. Agreement on common format conventions – or standards – is therefore fundamental to the success of e-business.

Several factors make such an agreement difficult, however. First, there is no clear-cut definition of what actually constitutes a standard. Technicians, for example, tend to focus on specifications and the standardization process, whereas the most important aspect for economists is how widespread the usage of standard is. Second, if we take specifications as the yardstick, the sheer number of standards is overwhelming and confusing, a fact that inspired the computer scientist Andrew S. Tannenbaum to make his much quoted comment: "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from." Third, standards often cover different combinations of fields, so that they can complement and compete with each other at the same time. These three factors do not exactly make matters clearer.

The initial aim of this research project was therefore carry out an appraisal of the "market for e-business standards" in Germany to make it more transparent. To do this we selected from the wealth of existing standards those that are currently of importance and then systematically classified them. This "map" of standards provided the foundation for the project’s next objective: to make a detailed study of the use of e-business standards in Germany today and the problems that arise in their use and development, and to classify the situation in Germany by international comparison. Finally, on the basis of these results we defined areas of economic policy where we felt action is needed as well as actual recommendations for action.

Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economics and Labour (BMWA)

Target Group

• Government institutions IT decision makers in companies
• business associations
• software companies