09.21.07

Catching up on email today, I came across a comment that an EDI professional posted about how frustrated she was with EDI!  In the well-written response to an ec-bp article, she shared her frustration:

“I have not been able to find a solution that would not be very costly to change to and would make life any easier than the way we currently do things. All customers want something different and it is getting more complex as time goes on.” 

In another section:

“Edi in my opinion did not standardize or uniform anything. For example you have hundreds of options on every document. You don’t have to have the same information on your advance ship notice as the other guys. You can request an 855 instead of a 997.”

Guilty as charged…

Like many industries, ours has focused so much on empowering users through advanced features and complete configurability/customization that it seems nothing is simple.  This is partially a consequence that the real drivers behind e-commerce are the PRACTITIONERS, who are often at the leading edge of supply chain practices, which sometimes get complicated.  As a service provider and a software vendor, we owe our customers powerful offerings that are as easy to use as possible.

But if we’re not there yet, we are trying — and you don’t have to take my word on it!  Many of our key initiatives over the past couple of years are targeted straight at the issues highlighted, including:

• Development of e-Commerce Accelerators to make it easier for small and medium businesses to connect into global e-commerce with the software packages that run their businesses
• Managed services that can accept most protocols and translate partner formats into whatever you want internally
• Integration to other software vendors’ products (like BizTalk R2, webMethods, etc) to give customers choices and allow them to use what they know
• Ever more flexible web forms solutions that leverage Web 2.0 technologies

Now, before you right this one off as a sales pitch, time to come clean — as I said, we’re not there yet (and neither is our competition), and here are some reasons why:

• Integration is still very tough.  Even with standard integration options, if customers have customized their own software, it can require professional services (ours or someone else’s) to get it all setup and working
• Mapping between standards, and customized usages of the same standard, is still hard.
• The world of e-commerce processes is still largely “un-standardized”.  There are no widely used methods of specifying the rules for which EDI documents a given partner uses, and in what order (RosettaNet PIPs were ground-breaking here, but many factors have limited adoption — including complexity)

So, is it hopeless?  Absolutely not.  More companies do e-commerce, and in particular EDI, than ever before — and at a lower unit cost than ever before!  Keep on going, and we will too, and keep voicing frustration and constructive criticism, because we’re not there yet…