If you receive errors when attempting to view this white paper, please install the latest version of
Adobe Reader.
" Boomi AtomSphere is the first and only solution that provides complete cloud-based
EDI / Supply Chain Integration capabilities in a fully self-service model.
Boomi AtomSphere enables you to manage a trading partner network of any size using a scalable and secure SaaS integration platform.
Regardless of where your organization sits in the supply chain, from manufacturing and
distribution/warehousing/transportation services to retail, you can build, deploy and manage both traditional
EDI as well as newer web services, completely on demand."
Source : Boomi
Next-generation EDI: Time to Upgrade from Outdated Technology?
Electronic Data Interchange is also known as :
EDI Solutions,
EDI Software,
EDI Management,
Electronic Data Interchange Solutions,
Electronic Data Interchange Transactions,
Electronic Data Interchange Tools,
Electronic Data Interchange Software,
Electronic Data Interchange Management,
EDI Mapping,
EDI Infrastructure ,
Web EDI,
EDI Outsourcing,
EDI Gateway,
EDI Compliance,
EDI Translation.
This whitepaper will help you assess if you're using EDI effectively and realizing its full benefits in your
operations and on your bottom line.
INTRODUCTION
As a mid-market company, you've been using EDI for a number of years. It saves you time and money, and
most importantly, your trading partners need you to.
But now it's 2006 and time to take a fresh look at your EDI solution. New technologies offer a streamlined and
cost-efficient approach to EDI. These capabilities, combined with the changes occurring in the enterprise
software industry, mean you need not settle for "workarounds," "good enough," or "my vendor has left me no
choice."
Ask yourself some important questions:
- How difficult is it to add a new trading partner to your network?
- Are you getting the support you need from your EDI software provider?
- Is your current solution taking full advantage of enhanced Internet standards and security?
- Are you still dependent on the slow development and release cycles of a complacent software or
service provider?
You have options - effective, affordable options.
EDI: NOT KEEPING PACE WITH DEMANDS OF MODERN BUSINESS?
Over the past 30 years EDI has become a widely deployed solution for exchanging critical transaction
information between businesses. Today, most businesses use EDI for only a small portion of their transactions.
But with new standards and security capabilities enabling EDI over the Internet, EDI adoption continues to
increase through additional first-time users and from current users' migrating more transactions into their EDI
solutions.
However, as with many technologies, the solutions provided by some EDI software and service vendors haven't
kept pace with ever-increasing demands faced by their customers -- demands to lower costs, effectively
compete and do more with less.
Industry or Partner Mandates
If you're not on the dominant side of the trading partner relationship, you have to comply with the
business-to-business integration standards set by your partner. Perhaps the reason you're using EDI is
because your trading partner(s) forced you to. On a case-by-case basis, this can be viewed as a cost of
doing business, although it doesn't have to be, as we will see later.
For example, consider MidCo., a fictitious company exchanging transactions electronically with three
different (larger) trading partners, each of which have different EDI requirements:
- Trading Partner 1: communicate through EDI via a VAN
- Trading Partner 2: communicate through EDI using a certified AS2 solution
- Prospective New Trading Partner: communicate through XML over HTTP protocol
Because of the limited capabilities of MidCo.'s initial EDI solution, it had to purchase an additional
product to support AS2 for its second trading partner. Now it must hire a consultant to develop code to
handle the XML data format and HTTP communication in order to win a new customer.
Three different products must be deployed and supported to handle these requirements. Three different
products now need troubleshooting when problems occur.
Enterprise Software Changes
To realize the greatest benefit from EDI, you must go beyond exchanging transactions electronically with
your trading partners and integrate your EDI solution with your back-office applications. A common
example of this is integrating purchase orders and invoices with the accounting module of your financial
software or ERP system. Depending on where you sit in the supply chain, your EDI solution will send
purchase orders to your trading partners and receive invoices for payment, or vice versa.
To integrate EDI transactions with other enterprise software, custom code must frequently be developed
to make these connections possible. This "connection code" must be supported and maintained. But
what happens when an enterprise software package is upgraded to the latest version, or even replaced?
The connection code may still work, or it may not. This adds significant expense to the upgrade or
replacement, because all of these interfaces must be modified, retested and reinstalled. Often the
resources who wrote the interfaces have moved on to other projects or no longer work for the company,
further complicating this maintenance.
So for MidCo., in addition to the increasing cost and complexity of its EDI infrastructure, the EDI
connections with MidCo.'s enterprise software applications are less than robust and expensive to
maintain.
Your EDI Partnership (Or Lack Of)
Beyond these technical issues lies a more problematic situation - the relationship with your EDI software
vendor. When software companies cut their investments in R&D, it shows. Maybe not immediately, but in
the ensuing years. New standards and technologies emerge which aren't incorporated into companies'
products which results in a spiraling effect. Not only are you left with an obsolete solution, you're also
faced with continuously increasing maintenance fees to support this legacy product.
THE PRESENT
Due to the issues described above, many companies face a growing problem. The EDI infrastructure may
consist of any or all of the following; (1) an EDI translator; (2) batch scripts; (3) custom code; and (4) multiple
communication products. All this makes the task of supporting and scaling EDI costly and very difficult.
There are drivers for change - both opportunistic and circumstantial - that can ultimately enhance EDI and
business-to-business capabilities as well as reduce the cost of doing business with trading partners.
There are many reasons for upgrading to the new generation of EDI, among them: the need to cope with an
already installed EDI product's sunset; the need for new business growth; and the potential cost savings that
new EDI capabilities can bring.
Product Sunset
When a product reaches sunset, an expiration date is placed on the support the software vendor will
provide. While product sunsets are inevitable, software companies should provide a reasonable upgrade
path to help customers avoid unnecessary cost and effort. This requires a well-planned migration path
from the product vendor. Lack of a migration path (where the majority of your setup can be automatically
converted into the new version of the product) dramatically increases the cost of the upgrade and adds
unneeded risk by forcing you to re-test connections with your trading partners. Such a circumstance
signals a vendor's poor customer support strategy, and even worse, sets a clear precedent for this
scenario to happen again in five years.
If you're faced with this situation, chances are it's not the first or only problem you've had with your EDI
software vendor. Now may be the time to re-evaluate your relationship. Your software vendor should
treat you like a valued customer, not just a revenue source.
Business Growth
As a business grows, so will the requirements on its EDI infrastructure. Many companies simply outgrow
the software they purchased when they first began using EDI. Perhaps the EDI solution was made for a
small business and has reached the limits of its ability to perform effectively. Or maybe enough new
business-to-business standards have emerged where the burden of maintaining multiple products
becomes cost prohibitive. While outgrowing a solution is a problem, it also provides an opportunity. It's a
great time to evaluate other solutions that can offer simplicity, economy and speed into the company's
IT infrastructure and position it for greater efficiency as it continues to grow.
Newer solutions address all your EDI and integration requirements in one comprehensive product. This
enables faster setup of new trading partners, easier maintenance of trading partners going forward, and
most importantly, fewer points of failure.
New Capabilities: Real Time EDI
In some cases, the opportunity for change is simply the availability of new and creative ways of
automating business processes with your trading partners. Today, many organizations operate in a batch
environment when communicating EDI, picking up and delivering messages once or twice a day and
sometimes relying on a third-party service such as a VAN or EDI Service Bureau to communicate the EDI
on their behalf.
Solutions now exist to economically automate the exchange of information with any size trading partner
in real-time. It is important to understand that it's not EDI that is batch oriented by nature. It is the
software that exists to process the EDI. Newer, more modern EDI solutions now exist that can extract
data directly from your internal applications as it is made available, and deliver that EDI directly to your
trading partners using technologies such as AS2. Conversely, these same solutions can now receive EDI
from your trading partners and immediately integrate that data directly into your internal applications.
THE FUTURE
Like many other organizations, you may have already reached the conclusion that the issues presented here -
and perhaps others as well - make a good case for a new EDI solution. Be sure the next choice can last you for
years to come. It's important that your new EDI solution be "future proof." The capabilities and benefits of the
product as well as the vision and reputation of the company backing the software should be key factors in your
selection process.
There are some important things to consider as you decide on your next-generation EDI software:
Never Integrate the Integration
Each piece of code or product in your EDI infrastructure adds a new component that requires
documenting and training, presents another point of failure, and increases staffing needs and product
maintenance costs. Solutions exist today that provide a single product experience for end-to-end
integration - from your external business partners to your internal application.
Consider Scalability - Even In Advance of Needing It
Simply put, your EDI solution must grow with your business. The solution you select must support
clustering, so your EDI doesn't go offline in the event of hardware failure. The solution must also be
scalable to meet the growing needs of your business. Small-business EDI solutions are made for desktop
PC's or modest servers. Conversely, large-business EDI solutions require prohibitively expensive
hardware and failover infrastructure. However, solutions do exist to let mid-market companies scale
their requirements while controlling hardware investments.
A true Partnership - Work Only with Vendors with a Reputation for Customer Support
Your EDI solution goes beyond the actual software you purchase. Good criteria for judging current and
future vendors include:
- Support: How long does it typically take for software issues to be resolved?
- Maintenance: What is the value received for ongoing maintenance costs? Is the product
consistently being enhanced with valuable benefits? Also, is the upgrade path easy? How
much work done in the current version of the product must be re-done to adopt a new version
of the product?
- Relationship: What is the process for requesting enhancements, and what's the cycle time
for getting them implemented in the product? How responsive is the vendor to requests for
professional services (e.g. when needed to implement new trading partners)? The quality of a
relationship can often be measured by both the turnaround provided by the vendor to begin a
new project, as well as the quality of resources that are used for the project.
CONCLUSION: REMEMBER THE PAST, EXAMINE THE PRESENT AND PLAN
FOR THE FUTURE.
Over the years, changing IT priorities, resource availability, vendor support issues and other factors may have
created a fragile EDI infrastructure in your company. Combine those technology issues with the behavior of
some EDI software vendors who continue to raise prices and sunset products with no real migration path, and
suddenly the costs of EDI begin to outweigh the benefits. There are alternatives - both new and exciting
technologies to streamline EDI processes from software companies that build partnerships with their
customers.
Now may be the time to re-examine your EDI solutions. For more information on superior EDI software and
services, contact Boomi Software.
Bob Lewis, Vice President of Sales
(412) 276-5255
About Boomi Software
Boomi Software improves the efficiency and effectiveness of mid-size businesses by enabling B2B, application
and data integration in one easy-to-deploy, simple-to-use product. Boomi's unique visual integration approach
allows users to design and build powerful configurations to handle a broad range of integration needs with
point-and-click, drag-and-drop ease. Boomi's integration projects are up and running in weeks, not months, and
do not require any programming resources. Backed by its extraordinary support services, customers quickly
see the benefit of their investment in Boomi. For more information about Boomi Software, visit
www.boomi.com.