Re: IBM Billing -- MIDRANGE-L

From Al Macintyre ... here is material for a future IMHO

The primary problem with IBM invoicing in my opinion is abuse of all these 
IBM model numbers & codes.  We technical people can glance at the hardware & 
software numbers & say "Oh that is a piece of the operating system, I do not 
remember which one, I will have to look it up." but IBM also has these 
numbers & codes for various leasing contracts, that might be outside our 
area, so no one person in our company can figure out all the numbers & codes 
on any one IBM invoice, nor can we tell what those numbers & codes are FOR 
unless we recognize a pattern, so that we know in which area to go looking 
them up.

When I get my phone bill, it also has numbers & codes, but it is printed on 
paper that has explanations of the codes on the flip side of the paper, and 
clearly states where to call if I have any questions about what some code is 
for & why it is on my bill.  My monthly phone bill, without the explantions, 
would be almost as unintelligible as a standard IBM bill is, and we get a LOT 
of IBM bills every month.

Now in the real world of Business Payables, management does not want clerks 
to be intelligent robots keying in invoices for what purpose they do not 
understand, because there is this phenomena of bogus billing by unknown scam 
artists for stuff we did not aquire, so every invoice has to be matched up 
with some PO# or authorized leasing plan, or sent to the responsible 
department to sign off "Ok to pay this bill."  And we in turn are not 
supposed to be intelligent robots rubber stamping every bill ... I want to 
say "Just pay every IBM bill & forget it, with no review ... trust them to 
have integrity & never make any serious mistakes." but that goes against my 
company policy.

We are perpetually late in paying our legal IBM invoices because it takes our 
accounting department longer to figure out IBM invoices than all other 
vendors combined, even though this month's bills identical to last month bill 
except for the date, and I have repeatedly advised our accounting department 
that IBM is perfectly willing to make adjustments in the data on the bills, 
but YOU have to ASK for what you WANT.

In other words there are IBM bills overdue for us right now, that are sitting 
in stacks of papers waiting in line for someone to figure out.  The invoice 
could not just be entered into our payables when received because they are 
massively unintelligible.

Related to this is the issue of equipment under IBM maintenance that we move 
around to facility other than where it is on the contract ... we OUGHT to 
advise IBM of this so that they can budget where to deploy service personnel, 
but the invoices that should plainly indicate which are relevant to this 
stuff & in need of updating IBM are so camaflagued within the mass of secret 
codes, that several years go by before I take the trouble to do an audit & 
update IBM on our latest reality.

This also can have a negative effect on our company's efforts to allocate 
operating costs to different facilities, because the IBM bills are ostensibly 
also somehow communicating what invoicing is for stuff at our various 
properties & what is for corporate.

The obvious solution to me is for IBM to be just a little bit less paperless. 
 Do like the phone company does ... include sheets of explanation with every 
month billing, and consolidate bills into one envelope.

If you have 20 invoices for us for the same KIND of stuff, be it equipment, 
OS, service, in which the same package of explanation will do the job ... do 
not send us the 20 invoices in 20 separate mailings ... send us ALL bills for 
same KIND of stuff in same envelope, with the standard explanation for that 
KIND of stuff. 

WHAT is this stuff we are being billed for ... not just a string of numbers, 
but perhaps "X programming language compiler in Operating System for AS/400, 
without which you cannot properly use software written in X language" in 
which the billing for all such OS ingredients would be in invoices physically 
together, so that management can correlate this with my job responsibilities 
review in which I have told them that we have to be competent in approx 20-50 
different languages & tool sets because of how BPCS is structured; and
"Y piece of hardware" in which IBM has no conception of how incredibly 
constructive it would be to include the word PRINTER or DISPLAY STATION or 
whatever the case might be in the string of text ... in such a case the 
payable clerk could ask "What are the numbers of the printers at certain 
location" and instantly see that they match the IBM invoice so that type of 
bill could be approved for payment in minutes instead of weeks; and
"Z contract" that you signed for all this stuff, which you can reprint from 
our records just in case you managed to misplace it

Also which of these numbers & codes refers to what stuff ... billing contract 
... maintenance of WHAT contract ... support of WHAT ... equipment, software, 
OS ... and do it at a level of LANGUAGE that is going to be understandable to 
a clerk who is merely an intelligent robot outside the arenas of MIS & 
aquisition management, so that when such a robot takes such an invoice to her 
boss to question some element of an invoice, it will get decided upon 
immediately, rather than sitting on the boss desk for a week, then coming to 
me for clarification of something & me asking why can't you just look up last 
month bill which was approved, but if you insist I will research the code 
numbers that I am able to research, but I am busy right now ... I will look 
this up in a couple days.

Then when it does get keyed into our payable system, invariably it does not 
show that it is due X days after we got it, but that we need to pay it X days 
after it got keyed in, because except for IBM, other vendor invoices 
typically get figured out in a day. 

> Is anyone out there still having problems with IBM's invoicing?  I had 
>  thought this problem resolved, but my current primary client (and a couple 
of 
>  secondaries) is still having a problem.  Are we alone in this, or has the 
>  largest computer company in the world still not figured out how to perform 
>  one of the most rudimentary software applications?  Please give details of 
>  your problems, unless I'm just way off base here.  Good stories would be 
>  appreciated as well.

Al Macintyre  ���
MIS Manager Green Screen Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 
running on AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies
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