Mark,
Much of what you say below applies equally as well to the administrative
side of health care. Only now we do have a federal law mandating both the
standard format (X12), and the standard data set (as defined in the
implementation guides.)
However, based the pleas and cries from those deep the pit of implementation
I would venture a guess that even this attempt to standardize both the
format and the data has not yet achieved success. This is a whole other ride
that should be challenging - but fun! I guess it all depends on the semantic
definition of fun....ah.....the crux of the issue!!!
Rachel Foerster
Principal
Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd.
Professionals in EDI & Electronic Commerce
39432 North Avenue
Beach Park, IL 60099
Phone: 847-872-8070
Fax: 847-872-6860
http://www.rfa-edi.com <http://www.rfa-edi.com>
The age old problem of communication between organizations, individuals and
entities will continue as long as there are humans around who want to
attempt to talk to and understand each other. It strikes me as odd that
anyone would think that a "man made" process would not suffer from the same
short comings as does man himself/herself.
Considering that ERP systems were/are designed to satisfy mostly internal
issues and concerns, of which there are many, what makes any person think
that taking the act on the road is going to be any easier. This will
require folks to sit down around a table and negotiate or discuss those
differences and formulate solutions if possible. The problem is that the
negotiating process is not a level playing field. Each party is a customer,
the position of strength or a vendor, the position of weakness.
If one can force their unsolvable problems off on the weaker, then they will
do it and call the savings generated by an improvement in efficiency. The
weakling looks at it and says, my costs for EDI are out of control. One
fact of life is that most of those involved in EDI are in a position of
weakness, thus the cries from the pit of despair for some thing to come down
from on high and ease the pain and suffering (sounds like XML to me).
In defense of XML, improvements in technology and communications do lend
themselves to passing information (a purely technical breakthrough) in a
manner that is simple and widely available. Does it solve the problems
associated with attempting to communicate and understand another person,
entity, or organization? Not on your life!!!!
You will still have the ever continuing problem of how do I get the
information I received into the ERP and make it provide or produce something
that I can take and use with the tools that I have already built?
One answer floated around is to make all the ERP's the same. That will
solve the problem. Well, we all know that this is a perfect solution that
will never occur. There are always going to be those home-grown ERP's that
will enter into the mix because the SME can't afford the off the shelf same
ERP that everyone else has. So I will not be holding my breath waiting for
this to happen either! Or the government will step in and call it a
Monopoly.
I don't think that EDI, XML or any other standard up and coming has an
answer to all of the issues or problems associated with "automatic
electronic communication". But they do provide tools that can be utilized
to solve the issues and build solutions to answering some of those
questions. The Pandora's box of electronic communication is open and we in
the business will never be able to fully stuff the resulting plethora of
issues and concerns back into it.
Other issues:
Freight terms and what they mean on a PO. FOB destination/origin, who pays
when? Must be agreed to between the parties. Which prospective is used?
Drop Shipment and how it works How do I handle something in my
ERP if I'm shipping to a customer's customer and I don't know who they are
and have no mechanism for gathering their information, qualifying them and
providing the internal checks and balances to process them without having a
human person to deal with and defeat the checks in place?
Bottom Line:
The change in meaning and communication between organizations has kept me
busy most of my professional life. I have a feeling that this is not going
to change with EDI, XML, XYZ or any other standard that comes down the pipe.
So get in, sit down, hold on tight, and enjoy the ride. One thing is sure.
It's going to be fun :-).
Mark
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