Business-to-Business Integration

Businesses worldwide started exchanging electronic business messages with each other around 1970. This coincides with the establishment of wide-area computer networks. Businesses realized the potential immediately to send electronic messages instead of paper letters in order to conduct business electronically. Computer networks provided a significant increase of transmission speed, less failures due to message losses, and direct processing of messages upon receipt without manual transcript from paper to computer terminals or vice versa. Overall, business interactions became a lot more reliable and efficient.