Digitalisation and inter-organisational information exchange strategies of German companies—A survey with focus on small and medium sized enterprises

The reliability of well-performing production processes not only depends on internal but also on external factors in the upstream supply chain. Therefore, companies require fast and reliable information exchange with cooperating organisations. Since existing researches usually put focus on reviewing intra-organisational solutions, the authors have conducted a survey to capture the current state and needs regarding the inter-organisational information exchange between German companies. The main outcomes of the authors’ survey are outlined. In a first step, the current status of digitalisation in the companies is analysed. The authors have found that the use and implementation of modern methods correlates positively with the company size. Taking a look on the current methods for inter-organisational information exchange in a second step, it is seen that only a few companies are completely satisfied with their current methods. Companies see the greatest potential for the improvement of information exchange in standardisation and the increase of required resources. This indicates that companies would be best supported by the development of solutions that can be implemented easily and help to form the heterogeneous landscape of data exchange strategies towards a structured, standardised way.