Rachel, Tyrone, Leah and any others....

I don't think that our poster is a consultant with a low bid, or a new hire to 
be an "EDI Professional"...  No, it's something other than that...

Remember that many - MANY - MIS and IT related jobs have been ... outsourced 
... to countries with some decently intelligent and educated people, but they 
may not have had the training, experience or knowledge to do the job that 
they've had thrust upon them...  In some cases, they're fresh out of college or 
university with a degree in "Computer Science" (or whatever it's being called) 
- and a very general and generic degree, at that - with no specialized training 
in whatever program, application, system or language that they're being hired 
to support.

I'm going to make a huge leap into assumption land (ok, maybe it's not so huge 
a leap!) and guess that our poster is from India.  And is living in one of the 
bigger cities in which a lot of the off-shore out-sourcing of MIS and IT 
related professions has taken place.  He (or she) maybe has worked for this 
company that provides support for many years or just  a few days.  But, no 
matter how long they've been there, they're being asked to use their knowledge 
and ability to learn in something that they do not know and probably have not 
even heard of...

For our poster - just as everybody has said - EDI and Gentran are NOT quick to 
learn and super simple...  it takes years of experience and knowledge and 
training to figure this out...  it will not happen in an hour, 8 hours, a day, 
a week or a year...  As has been mentioned before - EDI is a constant learning 
curve and process.  Many of us have many years of experience doing this (from 2 
or 3 to 20 or 30!) and we're all still learning a new trick, concept, program - 
every day.

EDI - in theory - is pretty simple.  Send this data from this system to that 
system in a format that can be read by a translator.  Deeper - take this group 
of ones and zeros and HEX characters and transmit it to the trading partner, 
where they will use the translation document/spec you've provided to populate 
their system with the data from your system.

I tend to like it to e-mail - taking one group of data from one entity and 
transmit it - electronically - to another entity - who will read it and react 
and respond.

I know very little of Gentran - other than it can be very difficult to learn 
and implement and grasp all the ins-and-outs of the program... I know of people 
that do use it and they are constantly learning new things to tweak it just 
that much better...

Going off topic - just a bit - to out-sourcing... A very good friend of Mine 
works for "The House of Mouse" (aka Disney)...  He works at the theme park in 
Anaheim, CA (Disneyland) and has been with them for over 25 years.  He related 
to Me a story a few years ago how Disney outsourced the "help desk" jobs to 
some company in ... Bakersfield, I think.  Anyway, within Disney, everything - 
and I mean EVERYTHING - has been "Disney-fied"...  That SAP or Oracle 
application?  It's called "Donald" or "Pluto" or "Minnie" or ... but you get 
the idea...  Well, now imagine the ... dismay ... of the new help desk 
"department" when some user calls up from ... say ... merchandise control ... 
and is having a problem with their "Mickey" system - or HR is having problems 
with "Daisy" - and lest we forget accounting with "Chip" and "Dale"....  Here's 
this help desk employee being thrust into a world that they just do not know or 
understand...

And off topic on another front - a while back, there was a thread regarding the 
"importance of degrees" - it started off as a <JOBS> posting and delved into 
the topic of higher education and degrees...  This situation can be a classic 
example of having that wonderful piece of paper (the degree) and yet not 
knowing A THING about what your degree is in....

Ah, the times, they are a changin'....

Craig E. Dunham
EDI Coordinator
EYE Analyst

Re: Check list for EDI daily monitoring 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/message/24132;_ylc=X3oDMTJyN2FscG04BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE1BGdycElkAzIxMDc2NzYEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1MDA1NTgyBG1zZ0lkAzI0MTMyBHNlYwNkbXNnBHNsawN2bXNnBHN0aW1lAzEyMzI2MjE5MTQ->
Posted by: "Rachel Foerster"
Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:55 pm (PST)
It continues to boggle my mind why there are folks who have somehow either
been assigned to or hired to provide the services of a highly skilled and
expert EDI professional. And then some of these folks broadcast a plea to
this group asking how to "come up to speed" right away as if this is just a
simple thing to do.

I view this as the same as someone saying they've just been hired to
write/maintain, etc. application programs written in COBOL and want to learn
COBOL is 3 easy steps - or something else equally complex.

Oh well . . . .might as well as how to build a rocket to the moon is 7 easy
pieces as well.

Rachel Foerster

From: EDI-L On Behalf Of Leah Halpin
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 10:47 AM
To: rdhaprakasam2003; [email protected]<mailto:EDI-L%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Check list for EDI daily monitoring

Just curious, why are you being asked to do a job you're completely
unqualified for?

Leah

Posted by: "Tyrone Lumley"
Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:57 pm (PST)
*sigh*

I hate to be a hater, but why do I get the feeling this guy just took a 
consulting gig for a very low price ? Maybe not, I've been wrong before. Really.

Like others have said, there are no shortcuts. In it's essence, EDI is kinda 
like E-mail combined with a database. To understand mapping, you have to 
understand database schemas and structure, business rules and logic, some 
programming, etc. Once you get that, you have to know the tool you are using 
really well.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


------------------------------------

...
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.Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:[email protected] 
    mailto:[email protected]

<*> 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/

Reply via email to