Scott,
You clearly identify one of the major issues for a completely integrated EDI
environment....clean data, accurate product identification, correct
units-of-measure, etc. Companies that fail to clean their data during
implementation and testing will reap only headaches and problems.
Furthermore, using a different syntax (XML) to structure the purchase orders
does nothing to resolve the issue of dirty data, bad, missing, incorrect
products IDs and UOMs.
It continually amazes me that there are so many XML proponents who don't
understand this fundamental requirement, which holds true regardless of what
set of rules one uses to format/structure the documents.
Thus, the initial critical steps for any end-to-end integrated EDI effort,
whether using X12, XML, UN/EDIFACT, or even a proprietary file structure
are:
1. Clean up your item master databases and get correct product IDs and UOMs,
and then institute procedures to KEEP THEM CURRENT
2. Clean up your customer/supplier files and ship-to/bill-to codes, and
institute procedures to KEEP THEM CURRENT
3. Reach agreement with your trading partner on the semantic for each and
every data element
4. Reach agreement with your trading partner on the business rules, i.e.,
what does your trading partner expect you to do with the data they send you
and what are you willing/prepared to do with it and are you in sync with
your trading partner on this
Getting through these first essential critical steps is the challenge.
Michael, this is a great success story. Thanks for sharing it.
Rachel Foerster
Principal
Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd.
Strategies for Electronic Commerce
39432 North Avenue
Beach Park, IL 60099
Phone: 847-872-8070
Fax: 847-872-6860
http://www.rfa-edi.com
Michael,
I would be curious to know out of those 66,000 line items, how many failed
to load do to bad data sent by the customer? I have consistently battled
Procurement managers to properly train their personnel. It is amazing to
see how many Purchasing agents send generic part numbers and bogus shipto
addresses. One of my customers informed me a few months ago that they would
be moving to an XML format next year. She stated that it was more efficient
than traditional EDI. I asked her if her company was going to clean up
their database as well (notorious for sending garbage) in which she replied,
NO. It's as if these companies have forgotten why they implemented these
systems to begin with. It may just be that I see the worst since I am on
the manufacturing side and receive more than I send but it really makes it
frustrating when you can see how much both sides can benefit from Seamless
integration.
regards,
Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Mattias [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 7:12 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Success Story
6/21/01
As anyone who has been around ANSI EDI setups knows, there is a significant
time
and money investment required to put together a really good system with full
integration into an applications system.
The last couple of days I was working at one of my clients, a major
manufacturer
in Wisconsin. This customer is reasonably new to ANSI EDI, only doing
recently
doing any of their own work on it. (For about a year, they had been
accepting
ANSI orders from only one customer, using a Mercator application built by an
outside firm).
Over the last couple of months they had invested a lot of time and money to
get
ANSI X.12 running with a number of other customers who had requested it over
the
past couple of years, but still no one had seen any tangible benefits; it
seemed
EDI support was a "cost of sales" rather than an "aid to order processing."
The sales department of this firm was successful in landing a new account;
but,
they had to commit to being able to accept ANSI X.12 orders and provide ANSI
X.12 invoices. The IT department dutifully (though not without some
grousing,
but you expect that) set up the translation and mapping and integration,
went
through the testing, and on Monday the new customer sent in his first batch
of
orders: 324 PO's with 66,215 line items.
The orders were picked up from the VAN at 3:00 AM. By 4:00 AM, all orders
were
entered into the user's sales order system.
The next morning, the IT people did a little math: they figured it would
have
taken three (3) man-weeks to hand-key all those orders. The IT people were
amazed; and they usually don't get all that excited about productivity
improvements in "the other building" (the sales/service departments).
The next day, the customer sent in another 36 PO's with 8000+ line items.
More
savings.
As someone who has been a long time "true believer" in the productivity
improvements available using EDI, I just love it when a "real user" can
finally
and clearly see his investment pay off, so I thought I'd share.
Michael C. Mattias
Tal Systems
Racine WI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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