Retail EDI

by Jim B. Cantrell,  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The other day I was on an EDI forum and reading one e-mail after another where a poor kid salesman, selling his EDI system was getting bashed repeatedly.  Mentally he must have looked like Jodie Foster in the Accused or close to it.  He, that is, the company he works for offers some FREE services (It was DI-international) and has a promotion touting exactly that.  Others on the forum were, to say the least skeptical.  

Remember the buyout of QRS in 2004?  Did you notice the consolidations between Q304 through 2007?  You have seen a huge amount of VA commoditization in B2B services.  Many software tools have made it much easier to rollout higher value added tools to hub and spoke alike.  This has been forced by companies (And offerings like SQL 05) who needed to try and take business away from traditional VANs and the more recent ASP or now dubbed: SaaS solutions.  Mapping for a B2B Integration Company is a much less costly investment than it was thanks to some of those tools.  Four years ago I worked for an EDI company offering a fairly solid solution.  Another company (Our competitor) went to unheard of lows to capture market share - they got critical mass and were bought out less than six months later.  Their spin was free AS2 - all the data free - provided to/from was via AS2.  The owner hit critical mass and sold out like the Sex Pistols doing MTV commercials.  Since then you have seen nothing but decreases in transaction rates whether the measure is kilobytes or documents.  In our current economy you see the same thing, but for different reasons.  Now established companies are trying to hold onto market share and to do this they get lean on staff (Layoff) and try to increase value.  New companies have to struggle that much harder to attract clients – thus the online flogging of this salesperson.  

My grandfather told me once years ago, ‘there will always be someone bigger than you.’  It was his way of saying people who think they rule the roost one day always find there is someone bigger – or better – or faster, etc. than they are.  His idea applies to more than the size of kids on a playground, it applies to the value add, capabilities (Marketing and technical) and effectiveness of companies as well.  At one time I worked for a hosted EDI company.  In those days we talked a lot of trash about VANS and how they were ‘dinosaurs’ that couldn’t respond to changing market demands.  We also thought we would be the next Google or the “Google of EDI”…   - don’t go there – no one is slurring them.  They have an ‘good’ service offering.  Actually one of the few (Hosted systems) I trust.  That may be because I know it so well though.  ASP models were just the new flavor in town at that time.

After thinking that we could do no wrong for a couple of years it occurred to me we should be doing more.  I left and went to go help start another EDI company.  For years people have said “We sell an EDI solution”.  I was determined to do that in addition to being a “supply chain solution” for people.  I found a startup that would work, wrote the specifications for hosted ASN creation, built-in scan-n-pack, hosted UCC labels, FTP/AS2 up and down, sales and inventory reporting (Globally), all of it – even a catalog system that spat out 832’s or could feed GSDN.  We built it and had several clients running happily.  We made loud noises with a lot of retailers and world class manufacturers and logistics companies…  All the data you can send, receive, or upload (Reporting and so much more) for one price.  Plug and play any translator – or use ours, all of it.  We proved it, but too late.  The onset of this current market downturn made investors squeamish to say the least.