THE IMPACT OF COLLABORATIVE SYSTEMS ON ACADEMIA, e-BUSINESS AND INFORMATION SOCIETY

The economic impact of the digital revolution is highly important. Without www, globalization and outsourcing would have not been possible. The impact of the IT technological boom, especially on the higher education process is highly important. The facilities offered by the IT technological environments allow major changes both at the level of the teaching materials’ design and the projection of the learning environment, by using new systems and collaborative-participative technologies, student-oriented with distributed resources and a real fluidity of the roles in the learning process. Nowadays, small and middle – sized enterprises use the same collaborative systems (or their components) known by abbreviations such as ERP, CRM, SCM, HRS, etc. in order to provide data and information to the decision-making bodies at all levels, in due time. One of the problems in using collaborative systems has been the complexity of large-scale systems and, therefore, the main topics of this paper are: basic components, development of collaborative systems, benefits, costs, replacing/ re-implementing, e-Business, structuring the manufacturing Database, achievement of these systems successfully etc, and integration of these systems into the academic curriculum.