Hello Scott,

I would like to respond to your article.

I have been doing edi for about 15 years now. When I started we had a single pc in the corner we turned on once or twice a week to look for any orders that had been sent. Now we have about 30 of our customers sending us their orders and we in turn send them invoices and advanced ship notices among other documents.

I currently have to link my system to the mapping. If a customer asks for something that we do not currently have set up I have to call the tech support of my software to create a new link for me. We currently have to customize our flat files on a few of our customers to meet requirements.

If our customer uses a 3rd party to do their edi it costs from $300 to $1000 to test depending on what documents have to be tested.

I have checked into using a 3rd party source for our edi requirements. The problem that I have seen is that if you cannot integrate their software with your accounting software then you are doing double work. You enter the order into your software so you can do your business and then in turn show it shipping and creating the asn and invoice on the edi system so you can send them the documents. That just does not make good sense.

I personally am very frustrated with the way we do edi. I have not been able to find a solution that would not be very costly to change to and would make life any easier than the way we currently do things. All customers want something different and it is getting more complex as time goes on. Computers are black and white and an if statement is hard to do in some situations, so there is manual work that has to be done. Every customer wants their label set up differently. Edi in my opinion did not standardize or uniform anything. For example you have hundreds of options on every document. You don't have to have the same information on your advance ship notice as the other guys. You can request an 855 instead of a 997.

I like being able to get my orders thru the AS2 and have them drop into my accounting system. There just seems to be a better way to meet requirements and I have just not found it yet.

Marsha Batterton

Supervisor of Operations and Communications

Smith Abrasives Inc

501-321-2244 x 601

501-321-9362 Fax