e-Business standardisation in the Automotive Industry

Two Approaches Towards the Integration of SMEs

Martina Gerst
University of Edinburgh
martina.gerst@ed.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper looks at two different approaches to the
development of standards in sectors with a strong
presence of SMEs. A case study explores Covisint, one
of the automotive industrys major electronic markets,
as an example of a sector-specific approach to
standards setting. This approach eventually failed, and
the reasons for this failure are identified and analysed.
The committee-based approach to standardisation is
subsequently discussed. Theoretical deliberations,
together with the outcome of a survey, lead to a number
of recommendations how more relevant standards could
be produced, and how the role of SMEs in standards
setting could be improved.

1.
1.1.

The Context
The Automotive Industry

According to a study by McKinsey [1], in the next ten

years, the automotive industry will be shattered by a third
revolution following the invention of the assembly-line
production by Henry Ford and the lean production of
Toyota. Customers expect more car for the same money,
which means continuous cost pressure and innovation
marathon for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers).
This fact leads to a range of transformations in the
structure of the automotive supply chain. For example, in
order to improve customer satisfaction and increase
revenue growth and shareholder value, large OEMs and
their suppliers are forced to create networks. to replace the
existing one-to-one relations. Nevertheless, in these
collaborative networks the added value is beginning to
shift from the OEMs to suppliers and to other business
partners such as system integrators.
Apart from shifts in the value chain, the industry is
confronted with a number of transformations that
challenge the established relationships between industry
players. The automotive industry is characterised by
extremely complex processes and the standardisation of
processes and data is inevitable in order to meet

Kai Jakobs
Aachen University
kai.jakobs@cs.rwth-aachen.de
production requirements. Driven by challenges such as
shorter product life cycles, increasing cost pressure in
stagnant markets and higher complexity of the electronics
embedded in modules and systems, OEMs gradually
increase the outsourcing of manufacturing, which is
expected to rise from 25% up to 35% within the next 10
years [1]. The supplier community that is characterised by
small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) shapes to a
large extent the automotive industry (in Germany, nearly
63% of companies are SMEs), is also undergoing strong
shifts as the result of these pressures. Increasingly,
platforms and model varieties require advanced deals and
project management capabilities which means that in
terms of innovation management, suppliers have to be
able to provide leading-edge technology and efficient
simultaneous engineering processes. This change affects
primarily the tier-1 suppliers who are taking over systems
integration responsibility and management of the supply
chain from the OEMs.
Each OEM has an extensive network of suppliers.
They, in turn, frequently supply more than one OEM. In
this situation, bi-lateral standardisation of the complex
processes and technology that enable the co-operation
both between OEMs and suppliers and between different
suppliers is less than effective, as it would leave suppliers
with the need to maintain one system per OEM. Still,
this is the approach of choice in many cases. However,
possible alternatives are available, including sectorspecific harmonisation (e.g., in the form of an electronic
market place) and, particularly, international, committeebased standardisation.

1.2.

Committee-based Standardisation

Today, the standards setting process in the Information

and Communication Technologies (ICT) and e-business
sectors are very much dominated by the large companies
and other financially potent stakeholders. As a
consequence, there is the real danger that standards and
thus, ultimately, policies are based on the needs and
requirements of a comparably small albeit powerful
group of stakeholders. The action plan Innovate for a
Competitive Europe rightly says Voluntary

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standards, properly used, can help establish the

compatibility of innovative concepts and products with
related products and so can be a key enabler for
innovation. SMEs should be more involved in
standardisation, to exploit their potential for innovation
and to enhance the accountability, openness and
consensus-based
character
of
the
European
standardisation system.
Yet, the Working Groups (WGs) of almost all
standards setting bodies are populated by representatives
of large, multi-national companies. SME users i.e.
those who merely deploy ICT systems are hardly
represented at all, and neither are their umbrella
organisations.
Today, SMEs are under enormous pressure from their
frequently large customers to deploy e-commerce
systems (and the necessary underlying ICT infrastructure)
which are compatible with the customers respective
systems. Yet, as these systems typically differ, SMEs
would accordingly have to set up and maintain a number
of different such systems. This is hardly a realistic
option, and the use of standards-based systems is an
SMEs only chance to keep both its ICT environment
manageable and all customers happy.
Unfortunately, few standards take into account SMEs
unique requirements. Major standards setting initiatives
have already failed because of this. Thus, it seems to be
about time to have a closer look at the current
standardisation practice with respect to SMEs' needs.
The remainder of the paper is organised as follows.
Chapter 2 provides a narrative about recent
standardisation efforts in the automotive sector to create a
de-facto industry standard. Set up a standardised
electronic market for the automotive sector has been part
of these activities. As this attempt largely failed, it seems
legitimate to discuss other options that are available for
standards setting. One such option would be to turn to
the formal international (or possibly European) formal
standards setting process. However, with the supplier
community in the automotive sector largely comprising
SMEs, it is necessary to look at this groups specific
characteristics and resulting needs. This is done in chapter
3, which also discusses the relations that exist between
the different groups of stakeholders in standards setting,
focussing on SMEs. Finally, some recommendations
how the participation of SMEs in standards setting could
be increased, and its value improved, are given in chapter
4.

2.

What Happened so Far

The pressure for collaboration has led organisations in the

automotive sector to become involved in a range of
efforts to improve co-operation between manufacturers
and suppliers. Examples include electronic collaboration
projects, the integration of engineering processes, and
electronic catalogue projects to present product and

service data. Such Internet-based applications are adopted

not only to achieve operational effectiveness by reducing
co-ordination costs and transaction risks [2], but also to
improve communication and information presentation.

2.1.

Activities at LCM1

In 2000, LCM launched a strategic programme to ensure

the networking of the entire value chain beyond the
companys boundaries. In the area of B2B, the
programme aimed at a more continuous and efficient
collaboration with suppliers supported by Internet-based
tools. During a time frame of two years, several B2B ecommerce projects in the field of engineering,
procurement and supply were started and implemented in
different business units and linked to the supplier
community. These projects had reduced costs and
shortened throughput times to some extent, but LCM
aimed at an all-out effort to press forward interorganisational collaboration with suppliers on a global
basis. In LCMs vision, such collaboration should
include the integration of individual projects in the
business units as well as the integration of LCM-specific
applications into one global supplier portal with one
single point of entry [3].
The pressure for collaboration enforces integration and
shifted the emphasis from stand-alone initiatives to the
development of standardised and integrated solutions [4].
In this context, one form of IOS (Inter-Organisational
Systems) that meets the criteria for collaboration and
integration are portals. A supplier portal allows to
integrate content, applications and processes between an
OEM and its supply base in order to:
Improve communication and collaboration between
LCM and the suppliers
Provide real-time access to information held in
disparate systems,
Personalise each user interaction and provide a
unified window into LCMs business,
Integrate and access relevant data, applications and
business processes.
The automotive industry has been one of the earliest
and most enthusiastic adopters of supplier portals. Two
alternatives of strategic network design are dominating
the current automotive portal scene: either companies
decide to build up their own private portal (proprietary
approach) in order to create a network with their supply
base, e.g. VW Group or Toyota or companies decide to
work with electronic markets2 such as SupplyOn or
Covisint to deploy portals.
In 2001, LCM was contemplating the need to
introduce an Internet based platform to enable a better
integration with suppliers in order to meet the challenges
1

Large Car Manufacturer; we dont want to disclose the company

name.
2
In this paper, the terms electronic markets and Internet hubs are
used synonymously.

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in the industry. Such a platform required complex use of

technology and incorporated a multitude of standards.
Consequently, the decision to integrate business partners
with IOS involves a strategic decision whether (1) to
implement and customise off-the-shelf systems related to
proprietary processes (which means to stick to the home
made processes and systems) or (2) to implement
standardised technology (Industry-standards solutions that
use XML standards to exchange data and messages) that
supports standardised business processes. Various factors
(e.g. economic, organisational, technical, social) and
actors (e.g. players from internal business units, software
suppliers, consultants) situated in the highly dynamic
automotive industry influenced this decision. LCM
considered two alternatives, an in-house option which
supposed the creation of a proprietary portal for the
companys suppliers or the implementation of a
standardised portal solution, i.e. the one offered by
Covisint. In the case of LCM, the decision at this point
of time to implement alternative (2) was directed by a
cost-benefit analysis. The implementation of alternative
(2) was expected to lead to economies-of-scale in the
business areas where standardised business processes
could be implemented. Additionally, LCM aimed to
improve the collaboration with its supplier community.
From a strategic perspective, the implementation of a
standardised technology was part of LCMs corporate IT
strategy. At the same time, LCM was also one of the
stakeholders of Covisint. Due to the fact that the people
involved in the project brought together a large amount of
knowledge, the expectations for the success of the project
were very high.

2.2.

Covisint

In 1999, the Internet hub Covisint3 (Connectivity,

Visibility, Integration) was founded by a number of large
OEMs such as DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General
Motors and software companies such as Oracle and
Commerce One. The aim of Covisint was to connect the
automotive industry to a global exchange marketplace
with the offer of one single point of entry. It thus aimed
to represent a de-facto industry standard. First of all,
Covisint offered different own e-services, for example eauction or e-collaboration tools. Second, the e-service
offer aimed to improve the interconnection between, and
integration of OEMs and suppliers through standardised
portal technology. This technology provided uniform
personalised access from any location and any device
between networked organisations. The functionality and
infrastructure that characterises such open architecture
allowed the integration of diverse interaction channels. To
a large extent, the supplier community is the same for all
OEMs. Concretely, the same suppliers were using the
same OEM-own applications which always needed
different log-ins and different passwords. Therefore, the
3

Since 2004, Covisint is owned by Compuware.

big picture behind Covisint was the idea of one single

point-of-entry for suppliers of every company size to
facilitate and enable integration and collaboration.
The development process was characterised by an
iterative approach. Before LCM started to develop and
implement the standardised portal technology, another of
the OEMs founders had already started to develop a portal
registration process (based on the best practice in the
industry: the development of standards has benefited from
the development of portals by other organisations before).
As all the founders were very interested in taking the
most benefit out of Covisint, they were highly motivated
to develop standard processes which later could be
implemented in their own organisations.
In a first instance, standards development was related
to best practices in the industry and had been worked out
by a limited number of specialists from the OEMs that
were involved in Covisint. In a later stage, this small
group approach to standard development has been
replaced by a consortium of the Covisint stakeholders and
the software companies which delivered pieces of software
to complete the offer of the Internet hub. The consortium
approach was more similar with the typical approach to
standard development, following specific procedures and
having different working groups that met regularly.
Additionally, industry experts of associations were
invited to presentations and workshops to contribute to
the standards development. In a second phase, in order to
increase legitimacy among suppliers, they were included
in the process. However, participation in the consortium
was closely controlled, and the working procedures were
less rather than more transparent and open. The
restrictions in participation, the lack of transparency and
openness regarding the work within the consortium could
be explained by the desire of the OEMs to achieve the
initial goal of a standardised industry solution.
Due to the fast-to-market strategy of Covisint, the
standards were developed in parallel with systems
development and implementation. The emphasis of the
standardisation itself was on speed and on finding
compromise solutions that fitted all parties rather than on
long-term quality solutions. The development phase of
the standardised portal was very complex because on the
one hand, the complexity of the technology itself and the
difficulty to integrate all the different technological pieces
in an overall portal architecture.
There has been constant feedback between standard use
and standard creation. Facilitated by an interdisciplinary
on-site project team at LCM, regularly video conferences
and document exchanges on a collaboration project tool
between
the
teams
involved
facilitated
the
communication. An important factor which facilitated
this communication was the good inter-personal
relationships between LCM and Covisint, for example
some of LCM's former employees changed to Covisint at
its start. Good personal relationships lead to good
communication and ease the feedback process, which also
meant that the pace of implementation was quicker.

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Standardisation had followed a pragmatic approach, in

that it aimed to integrate into the solution each new user
requirement within the range of the budget restrictions.
For example, within the project team tensions appeared
between people from IT and business units related to
what happens after the adoption of a standard that does
not include functionality which is already in place and
relates to various systems. Such discussions, as well as
the solutions, were triggered and approached based on the
budget restrictions. Therefore, transforming the standard
involved a workaround solution to fit the users needs at
the same time as the limitations in the budget. Such a
pragmatic approach called into question the vision about
the best practice solution, as best practice was
sacrificed in order to comply with the financial
limitations. In the end, organisational and technical
factors together with economic deliberations have led to a
mutual shaping of what become the best practice
solution and the inner-organisational process.
A key challenge was the integration of the portal
architecture and functionality in the existing corporate IT
infrastructure, for example in terms of security, the single
sign-on, which enables the access to different information
sources and applications with only one login and
password, was difficult to implement in the overall IT
infrastructure. The integration of applications also proved
to be significantly more difficult than initially predicted.
First, these applications were either standard software
such as SAP which have a separate login process, or
legacy systems particularly programmed to fit the needs
of distinct business units, and which were not
considering the web-based frames. As a result, the cost
for additional programming to web-enable these
applications had to be discussed with the different
application owners concerned. As IT budgets at that point
of time were limited, discussions focused around which
department had the responsibility to cover additional
costs. Second, the above mentioned legacy systems
inherited functionalities that were either portal
functionalities or functionalities that were not in the
standard portal package and therefore not available. The
difficulty here was to convince the application owners to
integrate their application in a first phase with a reduced
functionality.
The overall inconsistent strategy of the OEMs with
respect to the implementation of the e-collaboration tools
significantly affected the suppliers negative perception of
portals in general. Whereas some of the OEMs prefer the
standardised industry solutions such as LCM, others such
as the VWGroup, vote for the in-house option.
Additionally, Covisint was not able to work out clearly
the benefits for suppliers and their distribution. As one
result, a number of large tier-1 suppliers founded
SupplyOn which became one of the major competitors in
the field.
A manager of one OEM said that with the
foundation of Covisint, OEMs aimed to simplify
suppliers life tremendously. Covisint represented a huge

advantage for a supplier working with all OEMs because

he could use one gateway to all OEM applications and
could also use the e-services offering of Covisint.
Unfortunately, neither Covisint nor the participating
OEMs were capable to sell this to the supplier
community. The suppliers were not aware of this unique
advantage. If you look what happened in the last years, a
supplier is forced to work with different OEM
portals...in some cases, he works with different portals
for one OEM. All have different requirements and need
different log-ins and passwords. This means additional
resources and investments for the supplier.
Today, most would agree that both electronic markets,
Covisint and SupplyOn, failed to set-up a de-facto
industry standard for two major reasons. First of all, the
business processes of the different consortium partners
were difficult to agree upon and to harmonise.
Consequently, the requirements from participating
companies were very difficult to develop for third parties.
Second, the fast to market approach led to incomplete
solutions which were difficult to integrate in an already
existing IT infrastructure and were expensive to realise.
But effective collaboration requires interoperability and
the integration into back-end systems.
One conclusion that could be drawn from this would
be to look for committee-based standards in the future,
developed under the responsibility of an recognised
Standards Developing Organisation (SDO; an accredited
organisation such as, e.g., ISO4 or CEN5), following
consensus and due process, and giving all stakeholders
the chance to participate and to contribute.
In the following, we will report on a study about the
role of SMEs in the standards setting process. This is of
particular relevance to for automotive industry, where a
very high percentage of suppliers are SMEs. If a
committee-based approach were eventually to be adopted
in this sector it would only make sense if their
requirements, and their overall situation, were adequately
taken into account in the standards-making process.

3.
3.1.

SMEs and Standardisation

Some Background

There seems to be general agreement that user

participation is a sine qua non for a standardisation
activity to be successful, particularly in the field of ICT.
In fact, increased user participation is often considered as
the panacea for all problems. However, today only very
limited numbers of user representatives can be observed
in almost all major international standards organisations.
For example, only about 3% of the members of the
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)
qualify as users, only one of which is a true SME;
4
5

The International Organization for Standardization.

The European Committee for Standardization.

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almost all others are umbrella organisations or

administrative entities.
In fact, the importance of the involvement of all
stakeholders in the standardisation process is nicely
illustrated by the case of MAP6. The failure of this
potentially very useful multi-million dollar initiative may
not least be attributed to the complete absence of SMEs
in the standardisation activity. The extremely complex
specifications were done solely by very large companies,
for which this complexity apparently was not such a big
problem. Unfortunately, they failed to realise that the
situation was very different for their SME suppliers. For
them, the specifications were way too complex to be
implemented and managed. Eventually, the whole
initiative collapsed.
A distinction has to be made between large user
corporations and SMEs, as they differ considerably in
terms of requirements on ICT systems, available
resources, and relevant knowledge. Indeed, it has
frequently been observed that SMEs do not normally
participate in standardisation, a fact typically attributed to
a lack of resources. It follows that measures have to be
taken to enable smaller companies to contribute to the
process as well. This is all the more important since
SMEs are a major cornerstone of employment, and of
increasing economical importance in the future [5].
Frequently, small organisations tend to consider
involvement in standardisation being just not worth the
effort. They either try to get by on what they have got, to
talk to their service providers and/or vendors in order to
get customised solutions (with all the risks and
problems associated with this approach), or to solve the
problems internally by integrating home-made
enhancements (with largely the same problems as
customised solutions). Moreover, to actively get involved
in the standards setting process will probably be regarded
as being far too expensive and time consuming for
SMEs. Whats more, the eventual outcome of such
involvement lies too far in the future, and is far too
uncertain, as to be of any perceived real benefit.
Major differences between large organisations and
SMEs can also be identified regarding adoption and usage
of information technology. For instance, the former tend
to go for systems based on official standards (i.e. those
produced by ISO) if and when available, whereas most of
the latter opt for readily available off-the shelf systems
and services, which need to be cheap and easy to install,
maintain and use. Proprietary systems are also used if
SMEs are compelled to do so by e.g. a major business
partner. The non-use of many standards-based services by
SMEs is largely due to the fact that insufficient
knowledge and resources are available to employ these
systems, which are perceived as being extremely

complicated to deal with. This is a rather worrying

indication that official standards, and consequently the
products implementing them, actually fail in adequately
addressing the needs of major market segments for
simplicity and usability. In fact, this perception, may be
considered as a major impediment to a more successful
uptake of standards based systems. With SMEs being a
large base of potential customers, this exemplifies an
urgent need for simpler standards.
The procedures adopted by the individual standards
setting bodies suggest that the degree of control over, and
influence on, the standards setting process is about
equally distributed between the different stakeholders
(including e.g. vendors, service providers, and users).
One could, therefore, be tempted to assume that in this
process interested parties meet, compile and review their
needs and requirements, define the best technical
approaches and mechanisms realistically feasible, and
eventually come up with a standard that should survive in
the market and should pretty much suit all needs.
Unfortunately, this does not quite capture reality.
Especially the assumption of an equal influence of all
stakeholders appears to be flawed at least according to
some earlier research [6]. In fact, it appears that so far
development of IT standards has almost exclusively been
technology driven; with standards produced solely
reflecting providers and implementers priorities like, for
example, manageability rather than usability. This can
largely be attributed to the fact that relevant
standardisation committees have typically been
dominated by vendors and service providers. (see also [6]
for a more elaborate discussion). Accordingly, a more
realistic model is called for.
Figure 1 depicts the actual situation more
realistically. Deliberately or not, manufacturers and
service providers act as a sort of buffer between
corporate users and standards committees.
End
users
Business
partners

Large
corporate users

The 'third estate'

Product
user groups

SME
users

SME
umbrella
org.

Professional
umbrella
organisations

Manufacturers

Service
providers

Consumer
organisations
........

........

Standards
Committee
Government

General
public
very little influence
limited influence
strong influence
dialogue, impact questionable

Manufacturing Automation Protocol, an initiative started by General

Motors and other large companies in the mid-eighties to provide for
inter-operability of IT systems in production environments (see e.g.
[11]).

...............

hardly any influence

Figure 1: Relations between stakeholders in

standardisation

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The figure also shows that some entities seem to

form what you might call the third estate of standards
setting. It comprises of the general public, consumer
organisations and, most notably here, SME user
companies. They are largely separate from the key
players, with SME umbrella organisations located
somewhere in between. Although they represent the vast
majority of standard users these groups have extremely
little say in the standards setting process. This holds
despite the fact that organisations such as NORMAPME,
the European Office of Crafts, Trades and SMEs for
Standardisation, are actively participating in selected
standard working groups on behalf of their constituency.

3.2.

A Study of SMEs in Standards Setting

To learn about the issues relating to SME users in

standards setting we conducted a study of members of
relevant committees of ISO and ITU7.
The study comprised desk research, several workshops,
8
and a number of (smallish) surveys . Here, data were
collected through different questionnaires with openended questions. Qualitative methods were deployed to
analyse the data.
The three workshops yielded mixed results. It seems
that the original idea of addressing geographically close
user communities (to minimise consumption of time
and money) is inappropriate, presumably due to the very
diverse needs and requirements of the individual SME
users. Rather, addressing a geographically distributed
group of users with similar interests and needs appears to
be more successful (as exemplified by the one of the
workshops).
Also, it was specifically emphasised that standards are
a pre-condition for solving SMEs ICT-related problems.
However, it also became apparent that many standards are
too complex, that SMEs need support when
implementing them, and that uniform implementations
are important. Another outcome was that problems of
software maintenance and supplier-dependence might be
best addressed by Open Source Software.
A brief overall stock taking of the outcome of the
surveys: Both ITU and ISO indeed appear to be
dominated by large companies. SME representation (if
any, that is) occurs primarily through small consultancy
firms, as opposed to actual users. Also, the influence
real SMEs (i.e., excluding consultants) have on the
process is said to be very limited in the WGs. At the
decision level it is virtually nil.
It does not really come as a big surprise that ITU
WGs are said to be very much dominated by
representatives from regulators, vendors, and service
providers / network operators (historically, the respective
7

The International Telecommunication Union.

For a full account of the study, particularly including the desk
research, see [13].

national PTTs were the only organisations with a right to

vote).
SME participation is extremely limited in numbers
(even non-existent for some groups), and accordingly
their overall influence is equally limited.
Respondents opinions were split about SMEs
influence at the technical level. A large minority basically
stated that in many cases influence is related to market
power. The majority, however, noted that the individual
capabilities of the representatives (i.e., e.g., technical
skills, language proficiency) represent the deciding factor.
At the decision level, only administrations have the
right to vote within the ITU. Thus, in a way they have
the most influence. However, large companies are
frequently heavily involved in the actual writing of the
documents. Therefore, they are rather influential at this
level as well. Very little, if any, influence is attributed to
SMEs here.
With respect to the benefits and/or drawbacks group
members associate with (increased) SME participation
benefits clearly prevail. For one, the broadest possible
participation is beneficial to standards setting per-se.
SME participation would also broaden technical
expertise, as they are frequently closer to state-of-the-art
technical development than big companies, and less
bound by internal rules and administrative procedures.
Also, they would be welcome as a counter-weight to the
interests of the big companies. This holds particularly if
they represented fora or some other form of umbrella
organisations.
Cost of participation is considered the major obstacle
SMEs will face if they want to become active in
standards setting. Suggestions how this could be
overcome include increased deployment of electronic
media to replace meetings, lower or waive fees for SMEs,
provide dedicated travel money. In addition, SMEs could
join forces and co-sponsor representatives.
Within ISO, academia and, particularly, consultants
seem to play a somewhat bigger role than they do in ITU.
Apart from that, the make up of the working groups is
similar to that of ITU.
Also not unlike the situation within ITU, SME
representation seems to be very limited in most cases.
However, one respondent said that SMEs account for
about 90% of her groups membership (JTC1/SC7/
WG18, Quality Management).
The importance of aspects like personality and
technical proficiency was particularly stressed by the
members of the ISO WGs. Only a small minority
observed that size is related to a companys influence in a
working group.
Perceived benefits and problems of SME
participation are pretty much in line with those identified
by the ITU members. However, overall the enthusiasm
about SME participation appeared to be less pronounced
here (with one exception). In particular, it was noted that
the typical sporadic/infrequent participation of SME
representatives may lead to inadequate familiarity with

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both technical aspects discussed as well as procedures,

thus causing unnecessary delays to the process.
Again, the lack of funding was seen as the most
important impediment to SME participation.

4.

Recommendations

Today, the active participation in standard-setting is

largely limited to large, multi-national companies in
most relevant sectors, most notably including the ICT
and e-business domains. In particular, SMEs hardly stand
a chance to make their voice adequately heard. As
standardisation and policy-making are mutually
dependent, this is an extremely unsatisfactory situation.
Ultimately, it means that the influence of globally acting
multi-nationals on European policy is out of proportion
with e.g. the number of jobs they provide in Europe. In a
way, SMEs are part of a modern-day Third Estate with
respect to their capability to influence standardisation and
thus, ultimately, policy making. This holds despite the
fact that there are over 20 million SMEs in the EU.
Standardisation processes provide a platform where
opportunities of technologies, requirements of companies,
consumer preferences, and other needs of the society at
large, e.g. protection of the environment, can be
efficiently mediated. Standards that are useful and usable
for all relevant stakeholders should be the outcome of
these processes.
Moreover, Standards are a core part of the
infrastructure that supports efficient innovation. [7] (see
also [8] and [9] for similar accounts). With innovation
being high on the agenda in Europe it would be
extremely unhelpful if SMEs which, after all, form the
employment and growth engine of the EU, were excluded
from shaping this infrastructure upon which they very
much rely.
A number of specific recommendations may be made
based on the above. Most notably, these include:
Target user communities
The needs and requirements of different communities
(e.g., business areas) may differ considerably. To
attract attention these sector-specific problems need
to be addressed. SDOs might want to explore this
approach. For example together with international
industry bodies such as ODETTE International which
is an organisation, formed by the automotive
industry that aims to set standards for e-business
communications, engineering data exchange or
logistics management.
Make standards simpler
Complexity of the standards appears to be an issue
for many users (not just SMEs). This may to a
considerable extent be attributed to ISOs tendency to
design overarching, monolithic solutions. A more
incremental approach, not unlike the one adopted
by the IETF, would be worth considering here.
These two recommendations came out of the workshops.

Devise ways of integrating requirements from

different types of users and sectors
Complex standards are not least a result of
inadequate user representation on the committees.
However, the context-specific nature of requirements
makes meaningful user representation a non-trivial
task. Dedicated user groups might be an option
worth considering, despite all problems associated
with this approach.
Provide support for representation through SMEuser umbrella organisations
An umbrella organisation (e.g., EuroChambers,
Normapme) should represent their constituency. This
should be done through dedicated and trained
standards specialists.
Both desk research
and surveys suggested these
recommendations.
And, at a more general level:
Re-think the current standards setting process
Basically, user requirements can today only be fed
into the process in the very early stages. Practical
experience does not go into the process at all. A
mechanism similar to the one employed by the
IETF, but possibly going further to allow for real-life
experience to go into the process, could be an option.
Think of alternative/complementing ways to achieve
interoperability
For some problems (e.g., maintainability) other
mechanisms of achieving interoperability may be
more suitable than (European) standards (e.g., open
source software; see also [10]).
Deploy standardisation as a means for the diffusion
of innovations within the EU
A standards working group is both a locus of
innovation as well as an enabler of the diffusion of
innovations by its members. Exploiting these
potentials to the fullest would very much contribute
towards a more innovation-friendly environment.
According to a study of nexolab in 2001, standards were
a major headache for SMEs. 75% of the suppliers saw
standardisation as a major obstacle for closer
collaboration [11]. Therefore, it might be useful for
companies to rethink their standardisation strategies.

5.

References

[1] McKinsey (2003) Study HAWK 2015

Wissensbasierte Vernderung der automobilen
Wertschpfungskette, VDA 30 Materialien zur
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[2] Kumar, K., van Dissel, H.G., (1996) Sustainable
collaboration: Managing conflict and cooperation in
interorganisational systems. MIS Quarterly 20 (3),
pp. 279300.

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Gerst, M., Schulze, H. (2003) e-Business in der

Umsetzung- das globale DaimlerChrysler
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[9]

[10]

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Swann, P.G.M. (2000): The Economics of

Standardization. Final Report for DTI, 2000.
http://www.dti.gov.uk/strd/economic%20benefits%
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June 21, 2004.
Egyedi, T.M. (2002): Standards enhance flexibility?
Mapping compatibility strategies onto flexibility
objectives. In: Proc. EASST 2002 Conference,
Standardization Track.
Schauler, C., Suhm, A. (2001) Scheitert ecollaboration an fehlenden Standards?, in
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Ioannou, A.; Dwyer, J. (1988): Map and Top:
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Helping SDOs to Reach Users. http://wwwi4.informatik.rwthaachen.de/~jakobs/grant/Final_Report.pdf

Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC05)

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