Hi Walter;
Daniel has a good point and, of course should be a consideration, if it
applied... Neither our company nor our trading partners are playing the role
as a VAN. On the contrary, both ICC and Intertrade have tracking information
and they archive any documents they handle for us. Intertrade has the
capability of displaying a date/time stamp at each point of activity where
the document gets processed. For example, they can tell me when my document
has been delivered to them, when it was posted to their outbox, when the
participating trading partner VAN picked up the document, when it was picked
up and acknowledged by the final destination. I've found this information to
be extremely helpful many, many times. I don't recall that functionality
available to me before making the move. If I get a document inbound from a
customer and their Sender / Reciever information is not a part of our
roster, all I do is set-up the trading relationship myself, and Intertrade
can repost the data. The documents are not lost and they deliver them when I
need them. The response is far and above superior to the service I had ever
received from the "other guys". I've never experienced a "please hold while
I disconnect" experience from their technical support. The support is
exceptional.
As far as the second comment, made... we were provided with all the
tools we needed which included a server that they provided... This may have
been something negotiated initially. It's used specifically for the
push/pull technology. The only communications product has been either a
secure FTP program for one VAN and the server mentioned earlier for the
other, and an Internet connection... You already have the translation
software in place for your current trasnactions, and there is no other
translation software needed. Granted, the XML documents are the upcoming
technology and are facinating to study, but it does not play a part in our
functionality (at least right now). If it does become an option, there are
tools we can use on our end that, I'm sure, will take care of our needs.
But, our current VAN's have taken the place of "the other guys" completely.
They provide exactly what we need.... a safe conduit for our documents to be
transmitted from one point to another.
I can't speak for Softshare or any of the others, although I have some
friends that use them and I understand the service and functionality is
exceptional and a lot less expensive than it was before the conversions.
Hope this helps,
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel L. Mehlhorn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 5:40 AM
Subject: RE: [EDI-L] Reducing/eliminating our EDI VAN
Walter,
Two points to answer before you get rid of the van:
1. Do you or your partners want to play the part of the van? I
know I don't. Who is going to track and take responsibility for lost,
missing, or misunderstood documents?
2. Do you have the server, licensing, and expertise to be a van?
We had to buy communications product, a XML translation product,
expertise, and equipment to embark on such a venture. We haven't hried
another person to bring in expertise we didn't have so guess who is
trying to learn and provide servace on top of his existing duties. If
that is what you want to buy into, be my guest.
Dan Mehlhorn
System Programmer/EDI Administrator
Crescent Electric Supply Co.
________________________________
From: On Behalf Of w_cohen99
We are a mid-size company and use EDI through Easylink (VAN). We
have 75 trading partners of which some of them are EDI brokers and
some of them themselves use other VANs and we pay about $1k per
month for our low-volume communications costs (~3600kc). We [still]
use a dial-up modem while connecting to Easylink.
We want to get into the 21st century and get away from using the
modem so we are looking at other options (internet/web-based, ftp,
http, AS1, AS2, etc).
Ideally we'd like to try and eliminate the VAN communication costs
from the picture. What we've done so far is look at other VANs that
allow us to get off the modem and go through an internet protocol
(via web browser) for communicating.
My question is how do I go about researching other alternatives such
as using AS2? DO I need to poll all of my trading partners to see
if they can handle AS2? If some can handle AS2 and some can't then
what are my options? How can we [slowly] get off of teh EDI VAN?
Thaks for any assistance.
Walter
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