Hi James -- Thanks for your prospective.... I certainly recognize the name of ECnet. Do you mind if I post your comments on my blog? Except I think you meant Ingram Micro -- not Avnet. In my research, several articles reference IM. Example of the Line56 articles, "the Paradox of RosettaNet" by Hildy Medinathat says in 1997 Chehadi was the "head of ecommerce strategy at Ingram Micro".
Do you still think Ingram is advocating RN? What do you think of RN's latest fee proposal? My observation of RN and other XML B2B "standards" is that their adoption has been primarily as "me too" order/supplier management transactions, POS/Inventory status, 3rd party logistic provider transactions, and some other distribution price adjustment models that are essentially the same as their EDI equivalent. I recommend that my clients implement a Canonical Model -- meaning you take the RN, EDI X12, UN/EDIFACT, OAGi, whatever, and them directly into the SAP IDOC, Oracle Gateway Extensions, etc. and process them identically. Again, there is no magical bullet that RN possesses. On the contrary, RN has a number of technical flaws, most obvious is the well documented problems encountered by the very large file sizes. However, if your big customer is an advocate of RN -- gotta love it & just map it into your existing processes. (However, you may have to purchase an expensive piece of middleware to handle the mapping/communication, or outsource it. I'm aware of only one relatively low cost middleware product that I would recommend for RN/RNIF: presuming a true integration process & not just a browser for " rip & read"). Traditional EDI has its problems, too. Especially the bloat of the "standards". Again, several of my main critizisms has been: early XML proponents oversold the "internet" magic bullet, over zealously recommended reducing staff by taking the "business" understanding out of B2B, underestimated the costs of moving to XML from EDI; selling the "internet" & associated standards as free; and trivialized the project management/"soft skills" of many inhouse EDI/ecommerce implementors. Treating B2B implementators as a "plug & play" commodity going to the lowest bidding outsourcing company certainly has gotten some companies in trouble -- including High Tech ones. I still observe this happening today; ergo, my outsourcing example posted a few days ago. If a company wants to outsource their B2B implementation/processes, they need to know what to look for, create a specific SLA, know how to create an internal support model/resource for the outsourcers, create audit procedures, create guidelines/examples that are useful; create methodologies on monitoring/auditing the messages, costs, and ongoing professionalism of the staff; and how to exit gracefully if the relationship fails (which often it does). Naturally, I do not want to paint all outsourcers with a broad negative brush. There are many highly talented, very knowledgeble companies, and I often recommend outsourcing to jump-start a B2B project. But it's not cheap and not perfect. I actually marvel on the great strides that Business Process Re-engineering has gone. For example, without tightly integrated messaging processes much of the revolution of manufacturing moving to China -- would not be possible (whether you think this is good or bad). I've seen high volumes of orders go from a completely manual process to complete integration with less than 1% of order processing errors and presumabily less errors as product gets manufactured, shipped, billed and cash received; cash apps move from weeks to manually reconcile one large check to processing within minutes. Business and comsumers have now been revolutionalized with the ability to view banking transactions/stock status online; email, blogging such as EDI-L, Ebay, Google, "Software as a Service concept" such as Salesforce.com, etc . These are all revolutionary to me. Thanks, Susan James Hatcher wrote: > Hi Susan, > > > > Thoroughly enjoyed your write up and when you mentioned Fadi Chehadi, > founder and former president of RosettaNet, it certainly brought back > memories. I have no idea where he is these days but I though this > tidbit might be enjoyed by all on how RosettaNet came to be... > > > > Circa 1998 / early 1999 before the Dot Boom, I met with Fadi. Our > company ECnet provided Hosted Service Web EDI solutions for the High > Tech vertical and RosettaNet was being touted as the end to EDI for > High Tech. We had mutual customers so Fadi and I spent quite a bit of > time together on several occasions and one day he related his story of > how he came to have the RosettaNet concept. > > > > Fadi had been a consultant with one of the former "Big 5" in those > days. He had a passion for BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) > which he bemoaned failed miserably. Companies just wouldn't change and > standardize their internal processes! So he has the great idea that if > the companies wouldn't change internally the way to go was change > external processes, get all trading partners to not only communicate > data in a standardized manner but get them to follow transaction > related processes as well. Once a company's external processes were > standardized then of course internal BPR would follow and be successful! > > > > "Resistance would be futile!" (This is my add not his words) > > > > XML allowed the flexibility to add process to a transaction, he looked > at the different verticals and decided High Tech was most ripe with > potential. Thus were born PIP's, combine standardized data with process. > > > > It is also interesting to note RosettaNet was failing miserably with > little or no adoption until they hooked up with Avnet the distributor. > Avnet had a significant pain in receiving and processing component > specification inquiries. As a distributor they had to process huge > volumes of customer requests for component specs. Neither the inquiry > process nor the spec data from suppliers had any standardization. By > getting everyone (suppliers and end customers) to use RosettaNet as > the data sheet inquiry process they improved customer service, saved > significant costs and increased sales. I am sure some other early days > people can confirm the first active PIP's were not order related it > was all around catalogue inquiry. This is why Intel was an early > adopter. Thus began the High Tech standard... > > > Beware BPR it's the next step! :-) > > Regards, > > James Hatcher > > -- Susan Stecklair, President Electronic Commerce, Inc. <http://www.ecommerce-inc.com> Visit our new blog <http://www.ecommerce-inc.com/trends> on eCommerce Trends, Issues and Outsourcing ( 408.996.7492 Business Office [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ... 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