Leah, Infoborder mission for the community is twofold. (1) Encourage hubs to move away from testing and certification solutions that are built on a model were the supplier pays for the testing. The plan is to achieve this by providing sophisticated yet simple to use solution similar or better in functionality that those provided by some service providers today and by raising awareness within the industry. (2) Build an EDI community platform. There are already some good communities like this discussion group and many of us keep in touch with our colleagues and customers in communities like LinkedIn. Our vision is to build on these and provide a community platform to go further by allowing us to share thinks like spec and related documents, provide a common place were members can cooperate and help each other interprete specific documentation, testing process. I completely agree with you that most specs are open to interpretation and depend on business case.
Infoborders was built with a sophisticated business rule engine that analyses both inbound and outbound transactions for validation and can identify business rules compliance. To start this engine will be made available to hubs conducting T&C (they will be the one defining the business rules), but eventually we a considering opening this engine in some form to the community. However we will provide the community with a syntax check module that will use the specs provided by the community. Other tools are also being prepared for community use. I know that is hard to picture the solution, but we hope the community will give it a try and help us direct our effort moving beyond the initial release. Thanks, Edward ________________________________ From: Leah Halpin <[email protected]> To: Rob Guerriere <[email protected]>; 'jkcedi' <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 8:55:36 AM Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Bye, Bye, EDI Testing Fees! Hi Rob, This is the part I find TOTALLY AWESOME: It has a spec builder which one can take the PDF version of a Macy’s EDI specs, for example, and load it into the spec builder to test one’s EDI data. How on earth did you do that? In my nearly 20 years of experience, I've found that most, if not all, specs are open to interpretation, dependent on business case, contradictory, sketchy, filled with unused segments/elements that really aren't and well, just plain wrong and ugly. Just putting them into a pdf isn't going to cure that. Tell me, please, how you did it. Thanks, Leah ________________________________ From: Rob Guerriere <[email protected]> To: 'jkcedi' <[email protected]>; [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 8:54 PM Subject: RE: [EDI-L] Bye, Bye, EDI Testing Fees! Hi Ken, Thank you for the interest and the correction on the typo. Which industry leader(s) predict (this) will end EDI testing fees in 2012? - I don’t want to name names but I spoke with many prior to the release. Personally, I think we can do it. The platform was developed by a talented crew that have been working in the space for a long time. I have first-hand experience with the Infoborders development team and have confidence that this platform will scale as a central hub for EDI testing, wiki, library and community tools. Perhaps we can make it more interesting and place a wager on it? Or maybe at least a poll for the EDI-L group. Who is involved in creating this free product and what is their return? (advertising?) – The revenue model is a freemium for the opportunity to up-sell other services. Infoborders also offers visibility and vendor scorecard tools. DataTrans offers EDI services and software. HP offers VAN and other EDI consulting services. So yes, advertising and marketing. The solution is a highly functional self-service unit. It is 98% there and the cost to support it are not that high. We believe it will be a highly used system that will help drive EDI adoption and thus lifts all boats for the industry. Something that we can all get behind. For those providers who get revenue from EDI testing services, they should consider embracing this initiative and be creative with replacing that revenue with other value added services. I realize you’ve been participating in this group for a couple of years (subscriber since 2001), but your posts are about the only time I’ve seen references to GTBP.org. I’d be happy to sign you up as a subscriber. Do you subscribe to the ec-bp.org - The eCommerce Best Practices? I’m the founder of the ec-bp. That blog was put in place to fight bad industry practices like testing fees. I’m also the EDI contributor to SpendMatters.com, which picked up the Bye, Bye EDI testing fees piece. Is the EDI Wiki at http://edi.gtbp.org/ different than the new link at http://infoborders.com/community-edition ? – Yes, entirely different. I really don’t have anything out on edi.gtbp.org and plan to replace it. Infoborders wiki – is the heart of how the site will be managed. It is a central hub and repository of specs. It has a spec builder which one can take the PDF version of a Macy’s EDI specs, for example, and load it into the spec builder to test one’s EDI data. If there is a change to that spec, then it works like Wikipedia with version control and alerts for the subscriber audience of Macy specs. There is also a spec library. It’s a great tool and we look forward to a full release. We are looking for a few more retailers to kick-start the Infoborders testing service. Anyone here? It can be used in production today. The full community wiki release will be March 1st. What is the affiliation between GTBP.org & DataTrans? – GTBP is a blog and newsletter which I am the editor. DataTrans is an EDI service provider and my day job that pays the bills. Thanks again for the interest. If you think it’s a good thing and would like to participate we can use a few experts here to champion the effort. In the spirit of the EDI-L group - it’s a community edition, managed by the community. All the best, Rob Guerriere From: jkcedi [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 7:24 PM To: [email protected]; Rob Guerriere Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Bye, Bye, EDI Testing Fees! Hi Rob, Not trying to be belligerent (no one is more in favor of eliminating EDI testing fees than I am), but the intro paragraph ends with “which industry leader predict will end EDI testing fees in 2012.” I don’t know if that was supposed to be “leaders” rather than “leader”, but I would like to pose that to you as a question: Which industry leader(s) predict (this) will end EDI testing fees in 2012? Who is involved in creating this free product and what is their return? (advertising?) I realize you’ve been participating in this group for a couple of years, but your posts are about the only time I’ve seen references to GTBP.org. Is the EDI Wiki at http://edi.gtbp.org/ different than the new link at http://infoborders.com/community-edition ? What is the affiliation between GTBP.org & DataTrans? Thanks for clarifying. -- Ken Cox From: Rob Guerriere <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 3:37 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [EDI-L] Bye, Bye, EDI Testing Fees! I think almost everyone on this list will enjoy this announcement http://youtu.be/Z5l2mJNF53A?hd=1 . EDI testing fees are about to become history. Happy New Year! All the best, Rob Rob Guerriere Global Trade Best Practices Org http://gtbp.org 773-704-9934 (m) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] No virus found in this message. 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