Your EDI Resource

With the economy heating up and companies out there cooking, our clients are looking to grow and find more efficient ways to deliver their products.  

Over the past three years several of our clients have done something which we really haven’t seen before, at least not quite like this. These changes in strategy seem to come in more like ocean tides rather than in a massive swoosh.

What am I referring to?

Photo appears courtesy of www.twin-loc.fr.  Welcome to our 200th blog post!  As I think about EDI through the years, I remember sometime during the early 1990’s taking a class on the structure and workings of XML. XML was all the rage and was supposed to replace EDI at any moment!!! It’s 20+ years later and yes, XML is widely adopted now in web service applications where systems talk to each other, but it’s really still the wild west with XML XSDs (XML Schema definitions) often inaccurate.  And it involves a lot of back and forth with trading partners saying, “…oh, hard code this, and that XML element loop can be executed multiple times, not the once limitation in the XSD, etc. etc. etc.”  Implementing XML with a new trading partner or transaction often feels like black magic to get it all working correctly, and that’s in the best of circumstances – usually it’s teams of technical and business staff on endless conference calls just to get it right.  Did XML replace EDI?  No.

As I sit at my desk for the last time this year ending a very busy year I think back to the late 1980s when I first got into EDI. I had gotten a taste of programming in communications, connecting computers to Telex machines, and companies were clamoring for technicians who could figure out Bisync modems.  Walmart was requiring all suppliers to use them to receive orders and send invoices by EDI into the Walmart mainframes.

Picture appears courtesy of Christian Witte.  It’s getting hot out there…and I’m not talking about climate change.  Our garden is not doing well, but that’s a topic for another day.

I started my journey with EDI (electronic data interchange) 27 years ago working on Telex machines, yes the things of ticker tape parades. My assignment, through a relation with Western Union, was to connect pre-internet, pre-eMail, and even pre-FAX computers, still relatively uncommon compared to today, to the Telex network.  The end game was to allow companies to send domestic and international registered messages easily, without using the cumbersome, slow and heavy ticker tape driven iron Telex machines.

Photo appears courtesy of Jonathan Holmes.  RFID (radio frequency ID), a cousin to the EDI 856 ASN document, which is used to track shipment cartons along the supply chain all the way to the distribution center has a new, wider adoption in NFL football. What?!  With the Super Bowl and entertaining (and expensive) media spots behind us for this year, what does EDI and RFID have to do with football?

Picture appears courtesy of Wicker Paradise.  Whether you are an EDI Coordinator or Consultant it takes a lot of talent, patience and determination to do a good job.  When you're consulting with clients in a variety of industries, a good consultant has to wear many hats.  I was thinking over the last week of the many things I touched on and what it really takes to do this job.