EDI lessons learned

[Westat1]

Does anyone have EDI experiences (lessons learned or even better war stories) in your organization that you could share. I need to do a what worked what didn't work presentation.

Thanks,

[Tor]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but what does EDI mean?

[Westat1]

Electronic Data Interchange

[TallTroll]

Electronic Data Interchange. Its a "standard" used by large customers to streamline purchasing from their suppliers, eg in the UK, if you want to supply one of the large supermarket chains, you will be more or less forced to invest in the relevant EDI equipment.

It was introduced around the late '80s (I think), using leased lines and expensive proprietory comms gear, and although it was meant to be a common standard, somehow the various bodies that implemented it never quite implemented compatible standards. It was meant to be more or less what XML is now, but the frankly prohibitive costs involved limited its practical applications mostly to supply chain management for supermarkets, goverment departments etc

The supermarkets were particularly obnoxious about it all. For many categories of goods, they refused to deal with you unless it was using EDI. Then you had to find the £20k+ to get EDI in. Bacause they all used different systems this effectively tied you exclusively to a single large customer, plus whatever smaller contracts you could support. The large customer was then free to make you cut prices ("or we'll go to someone else, nyah!"), and you just had to play along. With a massive capital investment to pay for you NEEDED the large contract to stay afloat. You couldn't really "defect" to another large chain, because your EDI gear wasn't compatible, and few companies could afford to shell out like that, twice in a short space of time.