RE: ftp to kinkos.com

Nice work Jim !

And you are correct in your previous frustration. We are a distributor and
several of our vendors in the last year or so (and these are BIG, well known
companies) have come to us and said they require all order to them to be
entered via the web portal. Previously our purchasing department would enter
the P.O. and it would automatically fax. Or we can send it via EDI. But so
far these folks only want the GUI route. So our folks have to enter the
order in our system and then enter the order in their system; until they
support EDI with this. So all they have done is shift their "data entry" to
us...

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Franz
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 7:26 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: ftp to kinkos.com

i did ask their eCommerce Support Desk and they said they would take my
"request". I actually have no doubt that eventually (if not already)
fedex/kinkos will allow a server based transaction. Part of my frustration
is that
since I as a customer can only speak to the Support and Sales side of their
business,
I'm left with people who just don't get it. They sell & support what the
designers built.
I got more empathy from the actual store people who will process the orders.

My problem (and sorry about the rant in prev post) is that many in this
generation of mouse clickers think that the norm for everything is point &
click. My hope is (and Brian perhaps you can confirm this) is that there is
more being taught to student business managers, IT developers, analysts,
etc. Perhaps a good discussion of the benefits of EDI? I do see this kind of
thinking in RFID. Automated.
I will be contacting kinkos again to pursue this.

A few years ago I wrote a web based order entry for this same customer, and
after user input from their customers as well as the staff, we designed &
implented the system. Within a month, a new high volume customer came on and
said, "we want to transmit you a file. This data's already in our system,
why key it again." It was quite an arguement to explain to my customer that
this was a legitimate request & should be a part of the system. It actually
was fairly easy to add in. I had this in the original design scope, but my
customer cut it out because no current customers had requested it.

Jim