Virtual Logistics' EDI and XML Data Integration Blog

Liaison awards VL North American Partner of the Year 2011

Robin Smith — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:12:00 GMT

On Monday April 16th in Atlanta, Liaison CEO Bob Renner awarded Virtual Logistics Inc. Liaison's North American Partner of the year award for 2011. In presenting the award to Scott A. Beaver and Robin H. Smith, Bob indicated that "Virtual Logistics was selected for this honor because of their dedication to their clients and partners, their ability to articulate complicated matters in clear ways, their use of new socialization approaches to educate all of us, and their thought leadership through difficult and historic times".

In citing thought leadership Liaison channel manager Nathan Camp noted the launch in September of 2011 of Integration TV. Integration TV is an internet TV show that airs once a month. Each episode features an interview with a subject matter expert. Integration TV covers issues related to data integration in both the midmarket and the enterprise space.

In receiving the award Robin H. Smith , VL's GM of Sales & Marketing stated "we at VL are thrilled. This is an award that was earned by all of VL's employees and partners and it is a testament to the service, solutions and thought leadership we bring to the table".

Interested in Integration TV ? The link is below.

5 Questions to ask your EDI Provider.

Robin Smith — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:59:00 GMT

I am amazed in our sales cycle by the number people I speak to who have selected an EDI Service provider and found out after the fact that they have been slotted into a one size fits all solution. I don’t know too many businesses that are identical even in the same vertical. The way businesses are run is as diverse as the people who work in these organizations.

So here are five questions to ask your prospective EDI service provider.

1. Do I have access to the raw EDI data that my partner transmits? Many people select an EDI solution provider without thinking about what happens in the event of a trading partner dispute. What you see visually on a web form is the translated data. It doesn’t include the headers etc. that are included in the raw un-translated EDI transaction. In the event of a dispute, if you don’t have access to the raw EDI you don’t have a leg to stand on.

2. What if the web form does not fit my business? Most web EDI providers use a standard web form across all clients so they are unlikely to want to customize the web form to the way you do business. Trying to fit your processes into a business model that is different can be costly in person power and very frustrating. If the provider won’t or can’t customize the form then you are probably better off looking for an in house system. But ask the question.

3. Most web EDI providers have very low entry costs. They provide a basic service for the low price. Making changes come with higher charges. Ask what costs might be incurred if you want to receive data in a flat file, have a label customized or send data to an ERP package. These costs add up and if too high often mean work a rounds are put in place that end up costing the company again in person power and data entry mistakes. If you are asking about these types of features an in house system is a better bet.

4. If you are selecting a cloud based service, ask if the configurations are transportable. Do you have the option of moving the system in house? You will be surprised to learn that most cloud solutions lock you in and if you want to move you start all over again. Costly, disruptive, and something you should know up front. Once again if you think transportability might be an issue, think about an in house system

5. Finally, ask about up time. If the web portal or cloud platform goes down you are in trouble. What Service Level Agreement does the service provider have in place? Being out of service for too long could affect your business. Always important to do the due diligence on the ugly stuff. If you are a high volume site can you risk not having this critical infrastructure in house?

Take a read of our integration ebook for further information. It is free !

Is the EDI VAN Dead ?

Robin Smith — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:12:00 GMT

I have read, over the past weeks, a number of articles predicting that the VAN (Value Added Network), commonly used for EDI trading partner communications is dying a slow death. The latest article I read postulated that in the next year VAN traffic charges would be nil. Zero, no charge! Not sure I agree with that, but it is definitely a race to the bottom. In medical terms death can be slow or it can be quick. In the case of the VAN it is a tortuously slow death.

The race to the bottom has been precipitated by a number of things, shrinkage in North American retail, the rise of point to point communications over the internet – AS2 among the most obvious. In the early days of AS2 you had to ensure your software solution was certified. Certification was a nice way for retailers to force people to buy a particular solution because it was safe, tested and certified. Wal-Mart who was an early adopter soon realised how unnecessary this certification was and dropped the requirement of its trading partners. Today we rarely hear about certification as a requirement because AS2 is so common place. Times do change!

So what has happened is that AS2 has slowly eaten away at traditional VAN traffic. It’s been a slow steady decline as AS2 takes over. Why? Simply because AS2 does not involve a monthly invoice for a mailbox, traffic usage and bunch of other impossible to understand charges that make up the VAN bill. AS2 actually takes costs out of the supply chain and that’s a good thing.

So is the VAN dead? Not yet but it is very close. As companies revamp infrastructure and rethink their integration platforms the single purpose EDI solution will be replaced with a more comprehensive integration middleware solution. Moving traffic off the VAN and on to AS2 should be as simple as setting up a new partner. If your solution needs revamping or cannot handle AS2 elegantly, without lots of cost overhead then check out what we offer with the Liaison integration tools.

Middleware Build vs Buy - An on going debate - Episode 6

Robin Smith — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:22:00 GMT

Middleware buy vs build. Today we released the second episode of Integration TV's 2012 season. The feature interview this episode is with Hollis Tibbetts, of Artemis Ventures, in Austin, Texas, a leading integration expert who discusses the pros and cons of buy vs build. Hollis like most experts in the field believe there is greater value on the buy side of the arguement.

Hollis followed the release of the episode with a great blog article on the subject.

The original blog article that sparked the discussion about having Hollis appear on the show is linked below. Its a great read.

Building Integration Yourself - Possibly the Dumbest Idea You've Had in a Long Time

This is clearly a debate that isn't going away so the more resources available to let people make an informed decision the better.

The episode also referenced the newly released Times of London Supply Chain Report for 2012.

Questions or comments, send them to our twitter feed @vlintegrationtv

Middleware and The Long Tail of Integration

Robin Smith — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:31:00 GMT

The other day I was cleaning out a pile of old magazines and came across the October 2004 issue of Wired with the article by Chris Anderson called The Long Tail. Chris published a book in 2006 on the subject, which was followed by a TED talk in 2007, where he takes a concept from statistics to describe the long tail in business. He proposed that in some cases the bulk of a company’s business comes from a long tail approach – low turn over items. Apple iTunes is often given as an example of long tail at its best. ITunes has thousands of songs and generates the bulk of its revenue from one-off sales. Amazon is another example.

The long tail approach in statistics tell us that a long tail distribution occurs after a high amplitude population, where the low amplitude population is just beyond the mean and gradually tails off. The long tail population is the most difficult to see in standard data because the occurrences are one-offs. The combination of the one-offs, as Chris postulates, is very powerful from a business perspective. The long tail is best shown on a graph.

Power law graph showing popularity ranking. To the right is the long tail; to the left are the few that dominate. Notice that the areas of both regions match. Source: Wikipedia.

So this got me thinking. Could the long tail concept be applied to data integration to generate valuable insight and perhaps new revenue sources? The answer is yes.

I have always espoused a holistic approach to data integration where one looks at all the data flows in and out of an organization, and applies a global strategy to integration to leverage a more global ROI. The long tail approach is one that I believe adds enormous value. The reality is that those small, sometimes one-off integration projects often do not fit into the global approach. They are, to use the jargon of the internet, mashups. Mashups can be created from both structured and unstructured data sources and often provide valuable insights into the patterns within the data, insights that are not picked up in the holistic approach.

The problem though is not in the data or the definition of the sources, but rather in the tool sets that people have at their disposal to integrate that data. In the data silo approach a single solution is used to solve a particular data problem. Those single silo solutions do not lend themselves to a long tail approach as they are not flexible enough nor are they designed to handle multi variant data sources, whether structured or not.

So if you are considering a long tail approach to a data integration problem, make sure that the tool set you are using has the flexibility. Make sure it is a middleware solution, one that handles disparate data sources. ECS and Delta fit that bill. They are powerful, flexible, and have a low cost of ownership that make the holistic and long tail approaches to data integration very powerful.

Free Webinar: Why Every Company Needs a Data Integration Strategy

Robin Smith — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:19:00 GMT

You + a data integration strategy = success. Yes, it's that simple. Understanding the data coming in and out of your organization so that you can make the right long-term technology and process decisions is a must for every company.

Is your company living in organizational silos? Is the concept of a data integration strategy completely new (and slightly intimidating) to you? If so, this is a webinar not to be missed! Robin H. Smith from Virtual Logistics will join us to discuss:

Why you need a holistic approach to your company's data
Where you can leverage more from your technology investments
How to get started today

Click here to register for the February 15 webinar. We look forward to seeing you online!

Waldo graphic courtesy of Visitmix.com

Webstore, Ecommerce & Fulfillment House Integration - Episode 5

Robin Smith — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:27:00 GMT

Integration TV, today launched its first episode of 2012. Feature interview in this episode is with Michael Stevens of Integrated Fulfillment and Eric Brown of Fulfilltopia discussing the issues around web store, e-commerce and fulfillment house integration. Anyone with a webstore who is looking at fulfillment houses should watch this interview.

Web links to articles discussed in the show:

http://www.gs1uk.org/resources/help_support/WhitePapers/GS1_UK_EDI_Report_2010.pdf

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/future_of_edi/q/id/58057/t/2?src=RSS_CustomFeed&cm_mmc=Forrester-_-RSS-_-Document-_-6

If you search the web you can find Ken's report for free.

We are always interested in feedback both via our twitter feed @VLIntegrationTV or on our Facebook page. Tell us what you think. We are also always interested in hearing from viewers on interview topics they would like to see covered.

Liaison ECS Server and Delta - Web Services

Robin Smith — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:44:00 GMT

The majority of companies that have purchased Liaison's ECS Server software do traditional EDI, a few also use the software for moving data within their organizations, and a few also use the software for web services.

ECS Server has a nice little hidden secret - it can do web services right out of the box!

What are Web Services? Put very simply they are APIs (Application Program Interfaces) that can be accessed using the HTTP protocol over a network to automate the flow of data between applications or web sites. The data format used in most cases is XML however there are other data format protocols as well.

So if you are an ECS and Delta user, what would you use Web Services for if all you are doing is EDI? As the Internet penetrates ever deeper into business and we deal with ever increasing volumes of data, all sorts of applications, both on premise and in the cloud have APIs. If you ship product using one of the big courier companies - UPS, FedEx, or Purolator they all have APIs to their platforms. So rather than manually keying data, that data can be automatically moved up and down. There are close to 5000 published APIs today. Don't believe me, check out Programmable web.

If you use a CRM such as Salesforce.com or Dynamics CRM or even Goldmine, with ECS and Delta you can integrate the data flows using web services. If you have an online store with a commercial service provider such as Volusion, 3dCart, Amazon, Magento, EBay or Shopatron you can automate the data flow between your storefront and your in-house accounting system using ECS and Delta.

So don't look at ECS and Delta as just an EDI system but rather as an E-Commerce middleware platform. It’s a powerful one to boot. Need some ideas, download our eBook.

WEB EDI You must have money to burn - Integrate

Robin Smith — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:55:00 GMT

Over the years much has been written about the potential cost savings of implementing EDI. Many business have been forced into doing EDI by trading partners in order to retain business and many as a result have taken the easy route and opted for a web based solution. Why? The web portal solution is cheap, it is easy to become compliant and doesn’t require a buy in from the internal IT people as the solution requires no infrastructure purchase or software setup. Usually a web browser is all that is required.

Unfortunately, many companies once they make this leap feel that they now do EDI. They are right and they wrong. They are right in the sense that yes they are compliant with their trading partner’s request to do EDI but they are wrong in that they derive no benefit from that EDI. What do I mean?

An EDI scenario that is not integrated provides no real discernable benefit to the company that adopts EDI. The wide proliferation of web based portals that provide no integration means that most companies that have implemented this type of technology are wasting money being compliant. Integration is the only way to go.

Want the proof? A 2010 study by GS1 UK and Cranfield School of Management lays the numbers out for all to see. The only limiting factor with this study is that the authors have compared an EDI process to a manual paper based process. The premise of what makes an EDI system is not defined but the line of argument is clear it’s an integrated EDI solution that is the only way to go.

So if you are using a non-integrated EDI solution these numbers should make you think and think seriously about integration.

Order - 14 pounds per order - $21.50 USD
Invoice - 8.50 pounds per invoice - $13 USD
Advanced Shipment Notice - 12 pounds for an ASN - $18.50 USD

OK, so the total is 34.50 pounds or $53 USD if you do the full cycle.

So if you are running a non-integrated EDI system and your retail partner requires a full PO, invoice, ASN cycle it’s costing you $53 USD per order. Lets do some simple math. If you receive 150 orders per month it’s costing you a whopping $7950 per month or $95,400 per year, and that doesn’t even factor in the cost of your web portal. You got money to burn ?

I’m not a CFO or controller but these numbers surprised me. These numbers also do not take into account the cost of bad data entry and the down stream effects of that bad data. If you are using a web portal or two and don’t have integration you are either happy burning money or just don’t understand how much those manual processes actually cost.

Want to save some money? Don’t we all!

Data is a Corporate Asset - SMB/SMEs need to get Onboard

Robin Smith — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:23:00 GMT

Are you drowning in data ?

A more enterprise view of data and the collapse of data silos is a good thing for all businesses. The collapse of data silos is no longer the sole domain of the Fortune 500 or 1000 firm. Many mid market and SMB/SMEs need to look at embracing the same strategies towards data that these larger corporate entities embrace.

The collapse of individual silos means that the ad hoc single solution fixes for data integration need to go by the way side. The imperative for this change is all the more important in the global world we operate in, where products are increasingly becoming commodities and labour is portable. This is a fundamental shift in that integrating data needs to be viewed from a strategic perspective. We have blogged previously about this, but it seems to be a hard sell in the mid market and SMB space largely due to resource allocation and ignorance. Business owners can't see the forest for the trees as an old lumberjack I once knew used to say. It however also reflects a more profound issue that business needs to think about. Data is an asset.

Data is a corporate asset and in our ever-increasing data saturated world those firms that embrace data as a key corporate asset will generate new sources of revenue. Creating value out of data has been up until now the domain of the very few.

What do I mean? Traditionally firms have bought and sold goods to produce value, the old economic model of trading goods. Since the industrial revolution that economic model has evolved and become more sophisticated and complex. Today companies not only buy and sell goods but they add value to those goods by packaging services around those goods. In the retail field for example this is increasingly more common where commodity products are purchased for resale by retailers directly from low cost manufacturers bypassing the old trading company. Those North American distribution channels that have survived since 2008 have added value to product sourcing by adding in services, whether they be design, packaging or other. Increasingly, as the retail landscape changes to a more personalized shopping experience, web and mobile based data is going to become a critical component of the relationship that those distributors will have with their customers. Companies will more than ever need to think about data from a strategic perspective. This shift will require data to be viewed as an asset.

So why does data need to be viewed a strategic asset? Its really very simple. Companies are increasingly going to have to fascinate their customers not only to retain them but also to gain new ones. Part of that fascination model is to provide data that is not only clean, but timely and data that reduces the burden on the buying party and ultimately the supply chain these companies participate in.

What do I mean ? if you are a distributor and your partner wants to integrate you to a web program you are now not only providing product for sale on the web site but in more and more cases you as a distributor are also providing the data to create the web experience around that product. If you as a distributor are unable to provide any meaningful data to help create that mobile experience, then the retailer will find someone who is able and willing. Ergo, you just lost the customer, you didn't fascinate them. Unfortunately too many SMB/SMEs see no value in data but more importantly don't even understand how critically important data is to their survival.

Virtual Logistics has developed a data integration methodology for SMB/SMEs to help them understand how data is being used within their organizations and from there help them develop an internal and external integration strategy to harness the power of that data. If you don't know how your data moves then you can't possibly know how and what to integrate and with what tools. That leads to ad hoc decisioning which costs and is bad in the long run. Take a read of our ebook for some ideas and see how we can help you develop a strategy to harness the power of your data.

7 Data Integration Predictions for 2012

Robin Smith — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:30:00 GMT

Wow it has been a real ride this year! With the Greek and Italian debt crisis, to financial meltdown in Europe and increasing instability in the Middle East the world seems to be on a roller coaster ride these days.

The turmoil has definitely not been limited to the financial markets. We have seen the same realignment in the retail world and in the data integration world. The demise of Blockbuster, Best Buy being buffeted by web commerce woes certainly has made life interesting.

So here are a few predictions for the coming year.

EDI VAN traffic will continue to decline as more and more companies adopt AS2. Taking dollars out of the supply chain only makes sense.
North American retailers will increasingly be implementing web commerce programs. We have already seen some of the big retailers do this. These are far more complex implementations than the traditional EDI setups and take longer and require more flexible systems to complete.
Single purpose EDI solutions will increasingly be replaced at their end of life cycle by middleware platforms that allow companies to handle more varied data types, in a more flexible manner.
Companies will be required to provide and handle more and more complex data from a variety of disparate sources. This by necessity will require companies to step back and create data integration strategies. This is a good thing as it’s the first step in eliminating data silos.
Social media will increasingly become part of the operational landscape of many companies. As the desire for increased analytics around social media increases, data integration of social media data streams will become a critical must do.
Collaborative platforms will increasingly become the norm in many companies. These, like social media data streams, will require companies to forge data integration strategies to link these platforms to internal systems.
Finally, data will increasingly be viewed as a corporate asset. Few companies actually look at data as an asset but those who do will reap huge rewards in the coming years.

So from all of us at Virtual Logistics we wish you all the very best for the holiday season!

GS1 Canada: Paul Faguy on Standards, GTINs and GLNs - Episode 4

Robin Smith — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:08:00 GMT

GS1 Canada: Paul Faguy, VP Healthcare on Standards, GTINs and GLNs. The December episode of Integration TV was released today. The episode discusses two articles in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review that layout the future of retail. Feature interview this month with Paul Faguy, VP Healthcare of GS1 Canada. Paul discusses GS1 Canada's role as a standards body as well as the use of GTINs and GLNs in the healthcare supply chain.

Web links to articles discussed in the show:

http://hbr.org/special-collections/insight/the-future-of-retail

Data Silos need to fall for greater Supply Chain Visibility

Robin Smith — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:56:00 GMT

This week's blog article is brought to you by a guest blogger Michael Koploy who is an ERP analyst with Software Advice in Austin, Texas.

In his article Michael argues that data silos need to collapse for greater supply chain data visibility and better supply chain resilience. We can't agree more. The term death by spreadsheet in the supply chain is replacing the powerpoint equivalent in marketing !

Dissolution of Silos Necessary for Supply Chain Visibility

Inventory visibility, or the ability to access inventory data that is accurate, up-to-date, and accessible throughout the supply chain, is a key area of focus among supply chain leaders. Regardless of industry, improved visibility affords better decision making for both short term and long term supply chain investments.

In fact, a May 2010 study by Capgemini found that visibility was one of the most important initiatives for executives - 45 percent described improving supply chain visibility as their top priority for 2011. Yet, while many leaders are attempting to improve visibility, they are held back by the use of “silo-based” approaches such as managing inventory data using spreadsheet programs (e.g., Microsoft Excel) or having a sole purpose EDI solution.

While these individual solutions are powerful programs, they aren’t fit for the supply chain because they lead to data being delayed, disconnected and more prone to errors than automated entry methods that feed into supply chain software solutions. Just adopting a standalone solution, however, is not enough to lead to improved levels of visibility or accuracy.

John Simone, CTO of IBM’s Pubic Sector Supply Chain Practice, describes the ideal system as a “supply chain hub” - a network of solutions that have a common entrance portal for users. This hub allows for improved collaboration and streamlined processes.

To create such a hub, users need to adopt solutions that can network and communicate, such as a middleware message broker. They should be on the lookout for features that include the following:

Automatic identification and data capture (AIDC)
Dashboards that allow inventory data access throughout the supply chain
Notifications and alerts to pertinent groups
Communication features such as electronic data interchange (EDI) to expedite sending information throughout the network

The result of adopting these solutions and creating a supply chain hub can be seen throughout the value chain network. Examples include:

More accurate inventory data and policies
Greater insight into suppliers for procurement and sourcing
Less bottlenecks within manufacturing and distribution....

And many more. An investment in improving visibility is crucial to creating a supply chain that can withstand disaster, continually keep distribution humming and always work to improve operations.

Michael Koploy is an ERP analyst at Software Advice, and manages a warehouse software review site. For more on this topic, check out: Today’s Supply Chain Secret Sauce: More Visibility, Fewer Silos.

Ecommerce Integration - Virtual Logistics and SmartOSC Partner

Robin Smith — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:51:00 GMT

Friday November 25th, 2011; Mississauga, Canada and Hanoi, Vietnam:

SmartOSC Inc. and Virtual Logistics Inc. today announced the formation of a partnership to combine web store development expertise and back-end integration expertise for customers around the world. Using SmartOSC’s, Magento based SAAS ecommerce platform and Virtual Logistics’ SAAS Integration as a service platform, customers can now take advantage of a complete and fully integrated solution that connects their ecommerce business to their internal applications as well as their 3PL and fulfillment facilities.

The ecommerce solution can be fully customized to the online merchants requirements and allows them to take advantage of all Magento’s features. By extension with the integration as a service solution, the customer also gets away from expensive custom program development often required to connect the web store to back-office operations.

The Web Store Solution: Magento is the leading ecommerce platform for online business. With +100,000 active web stores, Magento has become the favorite frontend of international merchants looking to take their businesses to the next level. The demand for backend integration with 3^rd parties is continuously increasing and that’s where the Integration as a service solution fits.

“In working with Virtual Logistics, we have experienced an excellent partnership. By joining forces, we have been able to provide a complete solution to our customers while optimizing the flexibility of technology and competitiveness in pricing. With the robustness of the integration system, a reliable solution can be delivered to our customers within a very quick turnaround time”, said Viet Le Hong, CEO of SmartOSC.

The Integration as a Service Solution: Using world class integration technology the SAAS based platform is flexible and configurable to allow for multiple integrations in a cost effective and timely manner. The solution supports EDI, XML, spreadsheet, and csv file formats. Current back office integrations include many 3PL and fulfillment houses as well accounting, ERP packages and shipping systems.

“We at Virtual Logistics are really excited about forming a partnership with SmartOSC. We have worked with SmartOSC for the past three years and they bring solid expertise in ecommerce to the table. Working with them rounds out our ability to offer a complete solution to customers who want web store and ecommerce integration”, said Robin H. Smith, General Manager, Sales and Marketing at VL.

About SmartOSC:

SmartOSC is a leading E-commerce services provider based in Hanoi, Vietnam, with over 300 customers in Europe, North America and Asia. SmartOSC provides full packages from consultancy, web design to IT development and e-marketing services. SmartOSC is dedicated to delivering quality and driving growth for online business. As a Magento Certified Solution Partner, SmartOSC offers world-class e-commerce services to its customers in the quickest and most affordable way.

www.smartosc.com

About Virtual Logistics Inc. :

Virtual Logistics Inc. is a supply chain data integration company based in Ontario, Canada. VL has established itself as a key player in the small to medium size business B2B, EDI, XML, Web Store Integration, solution marketplace. VL offers both a SAAS and on premise solutions to its customers.

www.virtuallogistics.ca

EDI - Why Standards Exist

Robin Smith — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:14:00 GMT

Since the building of paved roads and railroad tracks, there has been a need for standards. Roads were needed to be of a consistent size to accommodate carts, which in turn made the width of carts (and even automobiles today) a specific size and height. Railroad tracks had to be the same width and strength in order for trains to travel across the country. Standards have always been a part of the movement of goods and services.

The same can be said for data. When computers began to be used by major organizations in the 1960’s, there was a need for different computer systems to communicate and exchange business information in a consistent manner. While the data exchange process was proprietary at first, ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and UN/EDIFACT (United Nations Directories for Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Transport) developed electronic data exchange (EDI) standards. This provided a consistent means for different computer systems to move data from one to another in a structured format. Each type of EDI document was assigned a number in the case of X12, and these numbers were referenced against the standard by the computers to know what type of document was being sent.

For decades EDI was the primary method to move business documents electronically. The importance of EDI integration was tremendous if a business wanted to do any level of volume with a customer or vendor. EDI has evolved from its origins but it is used in a number of ways including the following examples:

Purchase orders (EDI document number 850 or 875) for goods or services would be built using EDI standards. This included the format and size of the purchase order number or reference, the date, the billing information, the shipping information, and the line item information including quantity, product number, product description and price. Basically everything that was on a paper PO.

Invoices (EDI document number 810 or 880) would follow after the purchase order and ASN. The EDI 810 document replaced the paper invoice. Many businesses created agreements surrounding the EDI, and would pay according to the results of the electronic transactions.

Shipping notices (EDI document number 856) would be sent in response to an EDI purchase order that was received. The shipping notice or ASN (advance ship notice) was sent before a shipment arrived at the customer and in some cases became the physical invoice. This allowed the customer’s computer to validate what was shipped against the purchase order, so when the actual goods were checked in at the receiving warehouse or store, a confirmation of receipt would occur. The electronic reconciliation would enable a retailer to greatly reduce costs associated with the manual handling of shipments.

In a more complex supply chain using third parties for warehousing and fulfillment the following transactions would be used.

Warehouse ship document (EDI number 940) are used with warehousing and distribution to send a shipping request to a third party logistics partner or fulfillment house. Shipping advices (EDI number 945) are returned by the third party logistics provider to notify and confirm the items that have shipped and to be invoiced.

There are a variety of other EDI documents, all of which required some level of integration between two or more systems. From banks to import/export to retail and wholesale businesses, EDI is used to exchange documents between trading partners. Many large businesses would publish their own EDI standards that they would send to business partners for compliance and implementation.

EDI began before the internet, and at that time many systems only had dial up or direct line capabilities. Dial up required a modem on either end of a regular phone line that dialled one of the computers when data is to be exchanged. Most of the EDI exchange occurred through an EDI translator or service provider. These companies linked businesses together as trading partners so that the business computer only needed to dial a single phone line and integrate to one computer, which would then route the document to the right destination.

When the internet became more widely available, businesses moved away from the high-priced dedicated EDI service providers and used the internet to transact EDI. A secure internet connection would link two or more business computers together to exchange documents.

Even today, many businesses still rely on EDI formatted documents to transact business. This is especially helpful when utilizing third party logistics providers and other outsourced services. Thankfully the cost for EDI integration has also significantly declined over the years. Today, as transaction sets become more complicated and a company’s supply chain becomes more global EDI is till in many cases a favoured way of transacting business despite the popularity of other methods. At the end of the day all were built on the standards set forth in the 1960’s for electronic data interchange.

Want to know how EDI has evolved ? Watch the September 2011 episode of Integration TV.

Data Integration an ERP Perspective - Episode 3 Integration TV

Robin Smith — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:44:00 GMT

The November episode of Integration TV was released today. The episode discusses a book on social media and its impact on business as well as an interesting research report on social media from Canada's EDC (Export Development Corporation) that is free, the links are listed below. Feature interview this month is on data integration from an ERP vendors' perspective with Mark Canes, President of Bluelink ERP.

Web links to articles discussed in the show:
socialnomics.net

To Download the EDC Research Report you will need to join and login. The report is free.
edc.ca/english/tools_research_panel.htm

We are always interested in feedback both via our twitter feed @VLIntegrationTV or on our Facebook page. Tell us what you think. We are also always interested in hearing from viewers on interview topics they would like to see covered.

Webstore and Fulfillment House Integration

Robin Smith — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 01:46:00 GMT

A webstore is only as good as its fulfillment house, plain and simple. The finest website, the widest array of products or the most interesting niche line of offerings are useless if the products do not ship to the consumers in a timely, reliable and secure manner. Just as a sports car is nothing without a road, a webstore is literally nothing without a great relationship with a reliable fulfillment house – it is just a website if the customers stop shopping there! That’s why webstore and fulfillment house integration can never be valued highly enough.

Since the second half of the 1990s, the rise of ecommerce has been one of the defining characteristics of the digital age. Never before could a consumer find the exact product they wanted, compare styles and prices and availability from multiple suppliers, and then, with a click, know that the product – from a magazine to a vintage guitar to a kayak and beyond! – was headed their way. But many of the early days of the so-called “dot com era” were cautionary tales: companies appeared, rose to lofty heights and folded, virtually overnight. The world is much more accustomed to the digital age and its inherent bonuses and pitfalls today. In fact, the guiding principal of webstore and fulfillment house integration may well be said to well pre-date the dot com era, and merely be a call for good, honest business sense: take care of your customers and watch that bottom line!

The reasons customers choose an ecommerce outlet over a bricks and mortar store are multiple: from better prices through greater competition and seller options, a wider array of products available to view in one (digital) place to the ease of shopping from home, there is most every reason to use webstores for purchases these days. That is, unless your orders are never fulfilled, they arrive damaged or simply just take a long time to be completed. Often a consumer will indeed hop into their car and drive to a store – will even pay more for a product – for the immediacy we have all come to expect out of modern life. But with proper webstore and fulfillment house integration and optimization, an ecommerce retailer can build up a reputation of such reliability that a consumer can feel confident that as soon as they hit that “Buy it Now” keystroke, their goods are indeed on the way.

The key to a successful relationship between a webstore and its fulfillment house partner (which is to say specifically the way they relate to one another) is quality data integration. Only when the two partners are “speaking the same language,” so to speak, can the relationship flourish. That means a synchronicity of file storage systems, operational vernacular, and shared access to myriad types and stores of data. It can be complicated stuff, to put it mildly! But with smoothly integrated data sharing comes faster, better business.

Another reason why it behooves an online retail shop to partner with only the best fulfillment house is yet again a principle derived from basic business practices: a well-managed, efficient company saves time and money simply by not wasting time and money! Especially for many smaller webstores, much of the reason to operate only in an online market is to save precious capital on not keeping retail and storage space, and merely needing to maintain w decent webpage and solid customer relationships. The more capital a good fulfillment house can save by using efficient practices in-house, the best shipping rates and competitive fees for its clients, the more its partnered webstore owner (or manager) is left with cash on hand to be used to expand. Thus one hand washes the other when it comes to webstore and fulfillment house integration!

While there is no “magic bullet” – no proven formula for a perfect arrangement – when it comes to the partnership and working practices between a webstore and the fulfillment house it chooses, the sheer necessity of those two entities for one another breeds the need for constant reflection on and adjustment to said partnership. It is still “early days” for this new type of commerce. But, as noted above, the guiding principles that have made for the best business practices since time immemorial still speak to this new frontier of sales: take care of your customers and your bottom line. Today this means efficient, streamlined communication between customers, retailers, fulfillment houses and shipping companies, whereas in the past it was all face-to-face sales. But the driving force behind both of these things remains that same. There is no substitute for a job well done.

Silicon Halton - Virtual Logistics Inc. Profiled

Robin Smith — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:31:00 GMT

Virtual Logistics was recently honoured by being the first Silicon Halton member to be profiled on their web site under the member profile section. Virtual Logistics Inc. joined Silicon Halton just after the group was formed in 2009. The article titled Clouds: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly profiled VL's evolution over the past 17 years. Yup its been 17 years !

For those customers who have been with us since the begining, we extend our sincerest thanks for your confidence in our abilities over all these years. For those who are new to us the Silicon Halton article clearly shows we have evolved and will continue to do so. Thanks to all !

So what do we see as the challenges the new economy holds for our clients. Crystal balls are too expensive and they rarely work but here are some trends that we see and are activitely looking at:

1. Integration is more and more complex as companies deal with ever great amounts of data in their supply chains and this will force companies to develop startegies around integration as opposed to the current ad hoc approach.

2. Social media will play an ever increasing role in the operations of all businesses. The integration of the social media feeds will become increasingly critical in order to manage the volume of social media data. This will require greater collaboration between IT and the non IT sides of a business.

3. Data visualisation will provide greater levels of BI to companies. Visualisation will require startegic data integration plans within a company. Plans that currently do not exist in most organizations.

4. Finally as the requirement to trade more and more in the digital world imposes itself on companies the cleanliness of the digital data will become a strategic asset. Companies will lose and gain business based on data quality.

We are actively looking at how we can help our customers in these areas. Social media is one that VL has embraced and is actively pursuing. If you have seen the impact of these on your business we would love to hear about it. Also we will be covering some of these topics in future interviews on Integration TV. So check out Integration TV !

Supply Chain Optimization - Episode 2 Integration TV

Robin Smith — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:53:00 GMT

Supply Chain Optimization - Yesterday we released the October episode of Integration TV. The episode discusses three interesting reports that are free, the links are below. The feature interview this month is with Andy Davies of DWG, Atlanta, Georgia talking about Supply Chain Optimization.

Web links to articles discussed in the show:

ontariocanada.com/ontcan/1medt/smallbiz/en/sb_ebiz_toolkit_en.jsp

gartnerinsight.com/download/Predicts2011_IT_Transparency.pdf

deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/us_consulting_techtrends_021511.pdf

Get your Eyes Checked ! Its World Sight Day

Robin Smith — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:14:00 GMT

Today is World Sight Day. I had another blog article ready to go but thought I should blog about visual impairment and how important your eyes are. Don’t take them for granted!

For those of you who have two fully functioning eyes you are very lucky. For those of us who live with visual impairment what seeing people take for granted is something I am reminded of daily.

For those of you who don’t know, I have limited vision in my left eye due to an accident with broken glass. This happened at the tender age of 18 months. My right eye has had two surgeries in the past five years, one to correct a retinal detachment and the other to remove a cataract. Both have reduced my vision in what I always called my good eye. Although I see, I am reminded daily that sight is an enormously valuable thing.

If you ask any visually impaired person they will tell you they don’t consider themselves impaired they just don’t see very well. Visual impairment is not like other disabilities, outwardly people look, and I hate the term, normal. Pass someone who doesn’t see very well and you probably can’t tell. This is why World Sight Day is so important.

Some stats from the World Health Organization (WHO):

285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision.
About 90% of the world's visually impaired live in developing countries.
Globally, uncorrected refractive errors are the main cause of visual impairment; cataracts remain the leading cause of blindness in middle and low-income countries.
80% of all visual impairment can be avoided or cured.
Every 5 seconds someone in the world goes blind.
Two thirds of visually impaired people are women and children.

The numbers are staggering but what is most profound is the loss of economic potential and the loss of freedom for those who are visually impaired.

So, on World Sight Day, if you are a person who has two good eyes, get them checked regularly. Love them and look after them. Don’t be like most people who take them for granted. Loss of sight is a game changer and life altering.

In closing I want to leave you with a link and the story of Zoey. Zoey is an inspiration!

Social Media Integration with ECS Server and Delta

Robin Smith — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:04:00 GMT

Social Business Integration - In our ECS Server and Delta: Web services idea book we briefly discussed the use of the two products to call the APIs from various social media platforms, Twitter in particular.

In past half year, the rise of the social media use in business has led the pundits and experts to call their use in a business setting the “social business”. Underlying the term “social business” is the premise that various social media feeds and programs be integrated into a common platform for monitoring, tracking and dissemination. This is an interesting idea. If you take the idea further and look at the social supply chain you now have a larger paradigm for social media integration. The social supply chain is a new concept but one that is widely gaining converts.

I manage the social media marketing for Virtual Logistics and I can tell you it does become a big investment in time if you are managing a multi pronged campaign, as I am. So this got me thinking, researching and listening to the tweets of supply chain experts. At the Inbound marketing summit held in Boston this month the panel discussions were all about integrating social media into business. Integration now there is a word that I like, especially when it relates to data.

The reality is, with social media in business, if you are going to be successful you don’t just engage in the conversation you actually become the conversation by producing stellar content and ensuring it is disseminated widely. Marshall Mcluhan wasn’t so crazy with his the medium is the message statement.

So this got me thinking about how we could use ECS Server and Delta to automate a company’s social media campaigns. So here are some ideas.

Set up your tweets, hash tags and all, in a database based on your marketing campaign. Dan Zarella has some interesting research on when you should and shouldn’t tweet and the frequency of tweeting. Check his stuff out he has some great insights.
Have ECS Server run a Delta database map to pull the data from the database and use a web services call to post to Twitter’s API using the POST Statuses/Update.
This process could be scheduled in ECS Server based on the marketing campaign and the frequency you require.
So that is one of the social front ends. You could look at pulling down responses from Twitter and using them to analyse trends as they relate to your brand. Now depending on the CRM you use you could also integrate the responses and mentions into the CRM on a client by client or lead by lead basis.
Finally you could look at other social media APIs such as Linkedin, or collaborative platforms such as Yammer.com and Chatter.com for example. There are so many APIs out in the public domain today that can be accessed with ECS and Delta it is pretty much a green field or blue ocean!

None of this has anything to do with EDI, orders, invoices or ASNs but it speaks to the power of ECS and Delta as a middleware toolkit. So if social media is becoming part of your corporate marketing strategy and you are looking to integrate and become a social business, ECS Server and Delta are great tools that are worth a look at to do more than just EDI. If you already own ECS and Delta don’t over look the web services capabilities. These are not just EDI tools!

I would love to hear from people who have connected ECS and Delta to some cool APIs! Do share with us please.

Liaison ECS Server & Delta Integrated to Shipcompliant.com

Robin Smith — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:56:00 GMT

Shipcompliant.com - The proliferation of APIs (Application Program Interface) available to the general public, in many different verticals, has grown like that old hockey stick curve – straight up. In the September 2011 episode of Integration TV we highlighted an article from the Fall 2011 issue of Good Magazine which graphed the growth of APIs since January 2006. The growth has been explosive with close to 4000 APIs being publically available by mid 2011. If you take a look at the website http://www.programmableweb.com/ they catalogue 3920 APIs and about 6135 data mashups. Growth is not only increasing quickly and exponentially but so is the amount of data available to be accessed, parsed and integrated.

Recently we were asked to implement a very interesting API. Shipcompliant.com is a service used in the United States in the wine and spirits industry to ensure compliance with all federal and state laws for direct and wholesale distribution of alcohol. Any alcohol crossing state lines needs a permit and shipcompliant.com offers a compliance service to wineries and distributors who sell alcohol into a different state. Shipcompliant.com offers API access. If you use ECS and Delta connecting to this API is not difficult and the people at Shipcompliant.com are great to work with.

The setup is pretty easy. You setup a web services call in ECS to upload your brand information, then the product information and finally the price information. Shipcompliant.com have other APIs but these three are the basic ones that most people use. Of course I am simplifying things just a bit !

So if you are interested in connecting to shipcompliant.com using on premise software ECS and Delta are a great toolset to do this. If you are looking for a SAAS service to do this then we have this setup on our Integration as a Service platform and can easily integrate to any back end system.

Data Integration - Innovation and Productivity another call to Action

Robin Smith — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:31:00 GMT

I have not blogged about this subject for some time (check out my other articles) and this morning in the Globe and Mail there is a great op-ed piece by Kevin Lynch, Vice Chair of BMO Financial Group and Munir Sheikh a Distinguished fellow at Queen’s University. The piece is titled Wanted: culture of innovation.

The piece is an easy and quick read so do check it out. The piece highlights two issues that are paramount in my mind, digital literacy and organizational innovation. The two are inseparable as without digital literacy, organizational innovation does not happen it is very simple. Why is digital literacy so important and becoming increasingly critical to business adaptability and ultimately survivability. Ask any business owner and they will tell you they are increasingly dealing with ever greater volumes of digital data. That data to be useful needs to be parsed integrated and ultimately analysed. But here is the issue. If the middle management you have in place doesn’t understand or even grasp the available technology to parse and integrate that data then how on earth is a company going to be able to analyse that data and see trends and patterns before they get broadsided? They may hire a consultant or like most business they go about their merry way and put it off, or worse yet find a cheap stop gap solution that in the end does nothing of much value except cost. Easy to ignore what you don’t see or understand until you get whacked in the head. In today’s world we increasingly trade on the currency of digital data. If that data is dirty, inconsistent, or poor the downstream effects are huge no matter the size of the supply chain.

Take a small business that sells products over the web. The order is placed by the customer; an automated email goes out saying hey thanks! The order on the back side gets printed out and rekeyed manually into an internal system. The clerk makes a mistake and the wrong item ships out. So the downstream affect is twofold. The first, the customer receives the wrong product – you have a customer service issue. The product then has to be returned and the correct one shipped. The web store just lost a whole ton of money on the sale. This is simple example.

I can recite countless of examples of similar cases we have seen however the common thread is a lack of organizational innovation. Any organizational innovation that involves data integration will have profound impacts on productivity but there needs to be an embracing by management of all aspects of data integration and it can’t be looked at strictly as a cost. Data integration is not strictly an IT issue; it is an organizational issue so by default it requires a level of digital literacy amongst those players who are not from IT. Why is this so critical? Very simply if management doesn’t understand or is unable to grasp the concepts and implications and views data integration simply as a cost then innovation doesn’t happen and productivity doesn’t increase.

This month we launched Integration TV as a mechanism to help educate business owners and middle management on the importance of data integration and the innovation and productivity benefits of doing data integration correctly. We are hoping this will have an impact and wide reach as we feel it is critically important. So help us spread the word! That’s our call to action.

Integration TV has Launched ! EDI & Data Integration

Robin Smith — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:27:00 GMT

After much preparation the first episode of Integration TV has been released. The once a month internet TV show will host a subject matter expert on data integration as it relates to EDI, eCommerce, Fulfillment House Integration, Webstore Integration, Application Integration, data cleanliness etc. The feature interview will run 15 to 20 minutes. Interesting articles and news will be covered.

October's episode will feature a discussion on supply chain optimization with Andy Davies of the Davies Woerner Group in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Future interviews will include ERP vendors, and other specialists in their respective data integration fields.

We are looking for feedback ! Let us know what you think, what we should be talking about and any questions you may have. Send it to us !

We are in Twitter @VLIntegrationTV and we have a facebook page

EDI Integration - VL Launching Integration TV

Robin Smith — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 20:51:00 GMT

Coming in September, Virtual Logistics Inc. is launching Integration TV.

Integration TV is an internet TV show that will air once a month and is designed to be informative and educational. Each episode will feature a guest interview with a subject matter expert.

First episode filming has been completed and production is underway for our September launch. In anticipation you can get a sneak peek at the format by watching our teaser at;

Viewers can ask questions and provide feedback on our twitter feed @VLIntegrationTV

Tell us what you think !!!