>I have been in the situation where EDI got it own budget and was expected to >make a profit. Lost money, so to speak, the first three months then decided >to bill all of the departments for "services", and it went through. >When they are learned about all the profit EDI was making they wanted EDI >under their umbrella.
6/16/06 About once a year I get a chance to re-post this "Golden Oldie" ...this looks like as good a place as any... So with all original typos still intact and unedited...we bring you this true story. MCM ===BEGIN ANCIENT HISTORY==== 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. == END ANCIENT HISTORY=== ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get to your groups with one click. Know instantly when new email arrives http://us.click.yahoo.com/.7bhrC/MGxNAA/yQLSAA/OIFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix. Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L RSS feed is: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/rss Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
