10/30/12 All;
I am considering a couple of "new product" ideas and I would like to get some feedback re what would be useful and therefore marketable. I'll take any comments either here or "offline" I am currently mulling over two product ideas: 1. Acknowledgement Reconciliation. ================================ Operation would be basically scanning all inbound EDI upon receipt and outbound EDI immediately prior to transmission. INBOUND: For regular transaction sets, all the 'control' information from interchange, funtional group and transactions set envelopes, (eg date/time, sender, receiver, group ID, TS ID, etc) would be stored. If any acknowledgments (997/TA1/CONTRL) were received, the acknowledgment info would be added to the records created when the outbound EDI was sent. OUTBOUND For regular transaction sets, all the control information would be saved, awaiting receipt of acknowledgments For any generated acknowledgements, the control information would be used to update the information captured when the corresponding inbound document was received The software would produce pretty much the expected info: for outbound, "no acknowlegment received after <N> days/hours," and "transaction set rejected by partner" and for inbound the same info. It is my plan to allow users to set different acknowledgement parameters by partner and document.. eg a '997' is late for this partner's invoices if not received in 24 business hours, but for another partner's ASN, it's late of more than four business hours. My inspiration for this is the Emanio Trading Partner/DiCentral DiTranslator acknowledgment subsystems. This package captures all the right info, but presents it ugly and does not allow for any selectivity at all. It works fine for small volumes, but when the volumes get high and one only wants 'exceptions' it is really really weak. 2. Consolidated EDI/ERP History. ======================================= Given a typical scenario of, "EDI-enabled trading partner wants to know where is the ASN for his PO 12345", by combining information from the EDI system with information from the ERP system, a complete "history" can be developed: Order was received <date-time>, entered into the ERP system <date time> , shipped <date-time>, ASN #12345 transmitted <date-time> and customer returned "(A)ccepted" '997' <date-time>. Or, "Yes we got your order, but it is not shipped yet so you should not have an ASN or invoice." Or (yes, there are problems in the real world) , We sent ASN # 12345 <date-time> but you acknowledged it "(R)ejected" so we must have screwed up something and will re-issue it." The inspiration for this is, the amount of work necessary at my clients' facilities to actually figure out the status of an order or invoice document, when my clients partners (95% customers) are constanly losing outbound (from client) documents sometime AFTER acknowledgement has been returned "(A)ccepted" or not realizing their PO to my clients failed syntax checking and was "(R)ejected" and they are responsible to "correct and re-send." Essentially here, I think there is room for a lot of improvement for "EDI Systems" to integrate a lot better with "ERP Systems" when both systems are involved with the processing of orders in the manufacturing/distribution environment.. and I think I can do it on a 'package' basis and keep the end-user costs reasonable. While I am leaning "toward" the investment in developing both products, I thought I'd just bounce these ideas off my long-time colleages here before I re-invent the wheel or try to get the exact value of the ratio of the cicumference to the diameter or something equally useless or futile. Any developers who might be interested in participating are free to contact me, too. Maybe you've thought about doing these things but just never got around to it? Again, comments appeciated either here or offline to the email address below or the address used to post this) Thanks in Advance, Michael C. Mattias Tal Systems Inc. Racine WI [email protected] ------------------------------------ ... 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: [email protected] [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/
