EDI without education = risky -- BPCS-L

SSA have various divisions & branches - check out these web sites for example.
http://www.bpcsusers.com = SSA Canada
http://www.ssax.com/ = SSA Chicago

Part of the education needed is how to deal with SSA when getting at the 
services we think we are paying for.

They offer lots of individual services at a price, but it can be like dealing 
with many different companies that just happen to share the same name (SSA).

Jim wrote
> So what you are saying is, the product is available, but without support.

What Bill was implying - when we pay SSA for Help Line, they can be very 
helpful with bug repair & clarification regarding problems with the system 
provided we are able to be patient in getting at the answers we need, but the 
Help Line refuses to help with BPCS code that has been modified, or if the 
problems are due to converted data, even from another version of BPCS or 
using SSA's own buggy conversion tools, nor will they provide guidance 
related to researching modifications, such as the significance of various 
fields, and thorough education in the application is totally outside their 
scope.

But SSA Help Line is not the only SSA service we can buy - other types of 
services are available, at a price, from other departments & divisions of the 
SSA conglomerate.  OSG is free (SSA on-line data base of Tech-Support) but 
navigation takes getting used to, and one has to have a high-powered current 
technology PC Browser & an operator (human) versed in the technical jargon.

Some applications need more education than others, and different people 
within the corporate structure need more of it, without neccessarily being 
aware that they need it, by application.  EDI is like that, in that the end 
user needs next to no EDI education - it primarily needs to go to upper 
management & MIS.  Upper Management because their EDI decisions have the 
power to royally screw up the company, and MIS because they have to implement 
the decisions.

SSA Education in how to manage the application has to come from some formal 
class & I think SSA education could stand to learn from IBM education.  I 
have the 
IBM education discount card & my employer is considering renewing it for 
another year, but some education works on self-paced CD-Rom & listening to 
audio tapes while looking at illustrations.  It seems to me that this model 
would work great for some BPCS applications.

I learned EDI not from SSA but book learning - many many many articles in the 
trade press - and by reverse engineering the source code (an extremely time 
consuming ordeal).  Whitman Hart has publiished great stuff on EDI.  I would 
reccommend getting a book on the general theory, irrespective of package & 
VAN selection.

The nature of how EDI has to interface the corporate culture of many 
different companies means that modifications are almost certainly 
unavoidable.  SSA does have a Professional Services Division that will do the 
mods & of course charge money over & above the help line or education 
services, but this leads you to several additional challenges.  

If your BPCS is modified by SSA division-1, then that invalidates your help 
line support from SSA division-2 because they refuse to help with modified 
BPCS - but if you get your mods from some other outfit, you can get help from 
Help Line on 
the non-modified areas, and pull the wool over their eyes regarding the whole 
story so as to maximize the help available.

Another challenge is the whimsical nature of SSA's commitment to any one 
product.  SSA does want to reach EDI II, but they also want to make a lot of 
bucks through partnerships with other software suppliers.  They are somewhat 
like TCI cable TV in this respect.  If some other software supplier can offer 
a better deal, there is a great temptation to throw away any commitments to 
their captive audience, and launch a replacement EDI or Client/Server 
product.  

For this reason, my reccommendation to my management has been that if we ever 
go back to EDI, we seek a package that works well with BPCS, from some outfit 
OTHER than SSA.  I currently favor either Harbinger, because of their great 
Mapping Flexibility, or Wright, because we used them for EDI on BPCS/36 & 
their tech support was outstanding, better even than IBM's.  We would not 
have been able to navigate the TelCom hardware connections without this 
software outfit's diagnosis of why the connections were failing - something 
our VAN was unable to handle.

I would suggest that you transfer your support from SSA to some outfit like 
Nex Gen, as part of your EDI project, because outfits like Nex Gen have 
INTEGRATED regular support, modifications, and support for the modifications.

Also ask the competition, such as SSA-Chicago's competion that shares the SSA 
name, regarding my allegations of integrated support & modification 
assistance.  Nex Gen is probably not the only place that integrates regular 
support with support for modified BPCS.

However, without solid relevant EDI education, I still predict that you are 
headed for a disaster at Antigua which could cost you your job & hurt you in 
finding another job that pays a decent wage.

Al Macintyre
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