Hi there Anthony,
While I agree that your business choice of using the Internet was probably a
sound one, how about some justification of the costs involved versus if the
company had outsourced it to a VAN? Quite simply put, I find it hard to
believe the company saved $50K per month by not using a VAN.
For instance:
Was the $50K per month, if the choice had been "use a VAN" less than that
of:
How much did the company spend on:
Equipment
Communications infrastructure
Trading Partner management
Resources (such as yourself whom made the choice a reality).
Software, upgrades and annual maintenance fees.
Ramping community members on the service
Trading Partner participation costs
Maintenance contract on equipment used
Support
Chasing lost or defect transactions
and so on for this project??
(Then amortize it over the period the project is expected to live for)
(IE: I spent $2.5mil setting this up, whereby $50K per month would last 50
months, would the project last this long? Have I saved?)
IE: is it really (when you look under the covers) less cost per transaction?
Or has the cost simply "shifted" to another place and was the same or even
more?
While I agree it was most probably less, I cannot agree that it's cost was
$0.
(Afterall, I'll assume the company did pay you for you to create this
reality.)
My point being, is that the company chose to move the costs elsewhere rather
than to pay a VAN and this is often a sound choice if your company has the
resources, time and infrastructure and can save money doing so.
One thing that always makes me "cringe" is when a company invests alot of
money creating something new that only lasts about 2 years before the
technology has changed and they have to do it all again. I will admit that
VAN's fall into this hole on a regular basis and probably equates to high
fees to recover lost profits.
Best Regards,
Michael Burbury
GE ecXpress
System Administration
My views are my own and not the views of the company I work for.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Beecher, Anthony" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 4:27 AM
Subject: Re: Internet vs VAN vs capabilities and cost = Business Decision.
> Good lord! What is all this garbage?
>
> A perfect example of the shortcoming of EDI - get two overzealous
> sophisticates involved in your decision making process and you get bogged
> down in a bunch of perfumed garbage.
>
> The internet instead of the VAN is a no brainer! What company doesn't
> already have some internet connectivity? Why pay a cost per character when
> you can do it for no cost per character?
>
> If I had used VAN instead of internet, my monthly VAN costs would have
been
> about $50,000. Using the existing internet connection, the van fees were
0$.
>
>
>
> Anthony
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