RE: EDI at midrange sites - Off Topic?? -- MIDRANGE-L

Al: (et al)
EDI really only mimics what happens in real life business.  A customer want
to do something that is "non standard", sure, let him do it, he is the
customer.  This is no different than the "paper based world".  Customers
will always be customers, that is why we are in business.  If we can add
service (whether it be EDI or otherwise), then we do it.  I have always been
amused about people who complain that "customer A does not follow the
standard"...... That is why you buy EDI translation software.  It handles
all the differences in how customers do business, feeding into a single
interface into the application.  Do 2 different customers who send you 2
different formats for a paper PO send you into a tizzy?  Of course not.  EDI
is (should be) no different.  EDI should be transparent to your users.  I
have seen so many lousy implantations of EDI systems over the years that I
invariably hear that "EDI sucks".  In many cases, EDI takes the blame for
poorly designed application systems or lousy integration.  When implemented
properly, EDI can save companies lots of time and money..... process the
transactions and manage the exceptions.
cjg


Carl J. Galgano
EDI Consulting Services, Inc.
550 Kennesaw Avenue, Suite 800
Marietta, GA  30060
(770) 422-2995 - voice
(419) 730-8212 - fax
mailto:cgalgano@ediconsulting.com
http://www.ediconsulting.com
AS400 EDI, Networking, E-Commerce and Communications Consulting and
Implementation
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-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of MacWheel99@aol.com
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 2:22 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: EDI at midrange sites - Off Topic??


I suspect EDI popularity varies by industry.

We used to do EDI but we abandoned it because our customers let their
personnel violate standards & this meant that fulfilling idiotic demands by
customer personnel who did not understand the principles of EDI, as
requested
by our company personnel who did not understand them either, just wiped out
all the time we had to spend working on anything else, until management
realized they no longer could justify this expense.  Until the plug was
pulled on our EDI I package, I was constantly complaining that we needed to
invest in EDI II.

Basically we were doing modified EDI I.
I massaged the data to make it easier to transcribe, and I was constantly
working on trying to reinvent the EDI II wheel & being shot in the back by
EDI users who had been given absolutely no training in how to use EDI
productively.

We had 3 customers doing EDI & each of them had several divisions & each
division had several people playing with the rules & they were all playing
different games.

For example ... they really need to start using a particular kind of
transaction set, but instead they decide to change what various fields are
used for in a set that is inappropriate to the task, while still sending us
the correct set, and how do we tell the difference what they are using some
set for?  Well some value in some field that they are sloppy about doing
according to their own rules, so we end up having to do some reasonableness
checking on other fields to figure out which set of rules apply to this EDI
transmission.

For example ... they want to order stuff changing the rules of their own
company but they cannot get their own company computer department to
implement it, so their buyer tells our customer service what has to be
changed & our management goes along with this, so the EDI data has to be
massaged when it comes in to actually order something different than the
official records of the customer, and we have to keep track of who
authorized
this because the customer's accounting department might not pay the bills.