This is because one of the main obstacles to e-business project success is engaging trading partners and getting them to connect to the new system.

To encourage adoption, the report recommends targeting business and operational executives, not IT, because they were most likely to put up barriers.

Commissioned by the Australian Department of IT, Communications and the Arts (DCITA), the report said to: "Package systems so IT involvement in the decision making process is minimized, or eliminated altogether, as a significant enabler."

Undertaken by S2 Intelligence, the research involved 54 organizations and 12 e-business systems covering building and construction, telecommunications, manufacturing, agriculture, business services, insurance and financial services.

Bruce McCabe, S2 Intelligence managing director, said that while IT staff do raise legitimate issues such as security, in most IT projects, they actually created more problems when it came to B2B trading systems.