Many companies have been doing EDI for up to 30 years, or even longer, and when it all started the options were limited to In-house only. Managed service EDI wasn’t an option.
Furthermore, most of the early adopters were major companies providing the usual retail brands that we know and love.
Some of these companies still have in-house EDI solutions, as they have strong IT teams, but others have moved to a managed service/outsourced solution so that their IT specialists can spend more time developing core solutions that are required for the business.
What does not make sense at all today, is the fact that smaller companies with single person dependency continue to have In-house EDI solutions thus living unnecessarily with key man risk! The risks are so high, and probably not fully realised outside of IT. Also, the potential costs can be high!
Some of the possible issues regarding single person dependency are:
• Person leaves the company
• Person is coming up to retirement age
• Person realises that he is indispensable
• Person is off sick
• Person is on holiday
Clearly one way to mitigate this is to have a back-up person, but is that really a good idea, cost effective or indeed practical; if it’s not their day to day job, could they really step up to the mark quickly in a world where a £20,000 fine for wrong deliveries is not uncommon?
What about cost of ownership too when you have an In-house solution!
• Expert Staff (often at least one)
• Technical infrastructure
• Speed of deployment
• Increased risk
Additionally, in many situations it is important to ensure the solution runs 24/7, without issues hitting you when you get in first thing! With the managed service, the regular diagnostic checking that goes on throughout the day and night ensures that any issues are sorted before they even become issues! Furthermore, there is also the question of backup; many In-house users do not have “ready to go” EDI backup in place; this can be costly if the system goes down! With the managed service (ours anyway) it’s part of the service!
So why does the management of such small to medium size companies not see this until there is a problem?
The answer to that is down to the low profile of EDI compared to more expensive solutions that businesses use day to day. Yet….. EDI is a low-cost system but probably one of the highest Value solutions!
20 years ago, all of our business was In-house based, but now it is only 25%; so unless you are major organisation with lots of IT resource, take an action now and examine the points made in this article. Or contact us to learn more about our conversion programmes that can take you from In-house to Managed Service with the minimum of effort and costs. In the words of the famous businessman Del boy “you know it makes sense”!
But seriously we are here to help and not one customer who has gone from In-house to Managed Service has gone back….also has there ever been a better time to examine this?
Do look at https://www.advancefirst.com/edi-services/managed-service-edi/edi-outsourcing/ for reasons why we are leaders and also do take time a minute to read the TOMY case study, it is an excellent example of one of our clients that started with our In-house solution, then progressed to a Managed Service.
