EDI Help!

[swisslogistics]

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have any experiance or advice with regards to EDI Systems, providers and costs, we will need to install EDI in order to deal with high street chains and I would like to get a little clued up on about it and also get some advice from those who are already using systems which are good and which ones to stay away from.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Best Regards

Khalid

[mke]

Hi, Khalid, what exactly are you going too be doing? Which high street chains, not to be nosey but asking whether any of them stipulate their own supplier's system (can get eye-wateringly expensive)?

We can offer some pointers once we have an idea of what's required.

[swisslogistics]

Hi

Thank you for your post, we will be launching an energy drink very soon that will essentially be the only real competition to red bull, therefor we aim to place it everywhere rb is and then some, this will include all major chains, wholesalers, and independants.

What I want to avoid at the outset is having a full blown system installed as we will not be supplying everyone at once or from the start, we will phase in customers as we go along and this should also then give us an indication as to what kind of system we should install and fingers crossed I can then employ a edi team that does nothing but look after this side of the business.

I have spoken with a number of Edi companies and they offer different services from a full install to a yearly subscription system that costs £695.

I have started reading up on it but would still like some guidance from anyone in the know so I can avoid mistakes being made.

Thanks for your help.

Best Regards

Khalid

[mke]

Whoa there. Tiger! No need to give away the crown jewels (IP) to let us know what the starting price (brief) is. Chains, wholesalers and independents for non-alcoholic drink sales would have done! :eek:

OK, on the face of it a straightforward request but there are a number of possible complications. Hence our "third degree". At the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, EDI is a way to transfer documents securely using XML. It is not too uncommon in the medical world, as one instance. You need a document translation package and a document management package. Very simple, very cheap.

Then come some flies to disturb the otherwise smooth surface of our ointment. You are in the retail/wholesale sectors which include some very large, beancounter driven players. Beancounters love nothing more than "standards". In inverted commas because there is no real EDI standard, just something which has suborned the place of one. It is very costly, or was several months ago when I last looked into it. Like $10,000US per systems test by the "certifying authority" which has been accepted.

In other words, it's a lock in and there are others. Beware. Query your prospective customer base in advance. Unless your respondent suppliers have done their research in your sector, sorry to report, they are unlikely to cut the (live rather than theoretical) mustard.