EDI, EDI Education, and the EDI Education Series

The biggest response I get regarding book sales, especially in the Business arena, is for my EDI Briefing series. More so than the multiple science fiction or nonfiction books that are available on my Author Website.

The most popular 5 business related books I have written to date is the EDI Education Series. This series leads the reader from a zero percent understanding of EDI through a very clear cut understanding of EDI, its use, and most importantly - its format. This means reading these 5 books will give the reader an education in the X12 formatted document, and more importantly the ability to read raw EDI and understand several things about it; like why is it creating an error in reception, or an error when translating. If you are in the technology arena, this series is an investment that will pay a high dividend in your future.

CIO's, CEO's, IT and EDI managers have informed me they enjoyed the read, and the education from reading the series. One CEO let me know she read the entire series on a plane traveling from California to New York for a meeting. Once she attended the meeting, she understood the idea and use of the EDI documents and contributed to the discussion and determining the proper course of action.

This is why I created the series, there was no set of books which educated the reader in the ways of EDI or the X12 standard. Most previous books I reviewed dealt with why they needed to hire someone at a high rate to do the job for them, and proceeded to give the reader many reasons to contact them to consult and/or contract out their services.

Where-as my series can and does save the organization money, and allows them to do a great deal of the EDI processing in-house, saving what can amount to thousands of dollars each month, and those monthly fees can add up and increase as you increase your business. This cuts into your bottom line in a drastic way and puts that lost profit into the pockets of those you farm the EDI services out to happily.

My recommendation is always to do as much as possible in-house. Find an EDI Translator that can handle triple the work load you have at this moment. This means the software needs to grow as your business grows. After all, if your company does not grow, what is it doing. Stagnation in a company is certain death. Therefore, if your organization is not growing, it is dying.

GROW your business with the EDI translator that can and will grow with you. Stay away from a Value Added Network (VAN) as much as possible to save money. A direct AS2 connection to your trading partners will give you the biggest bang for your buck. If you need to use a VAN because this is how your Trading Partner transfers Purchase Orders, find one that has a monthly flat rate so if you grow, the cost remains the same. A kilo-character cost for EDI data is unmanageable and as your business increases, so will this fee. This means their fee is essentially charged for every Purchase Order you receive through them, but then you need to triple or quadruple that amount and remember you return an 855 (PO Acknowledgement), 856 (Advance Ship Notice), and an 810 (Invoice) for each and every 850 (Purchase Order) you receive!

All in all, there are a lot of tips and tricks in this series. Reading it will give you the ammunition to lead the charge into the world of EDI, and discover cost-effective methods to increase profit, and your return on investment. In the books is my contact information and I received many questions from a variety of leadership teams, gave them the answer and not not necessarily the answer they were looking for but the answer which is the best for their company, their situation, and future growth.

Give the series to your management team as a gift. It is the gift that will give them the chance to make a difference.

• ---Chris Cancilla is an EDI Developer specializing on the administration and development aspect or the EDI Translator.
• Well versed in many B2B software systems, such as Extol, Sterling/IBM, E21, Seeburger and several others.

The EDI Education Series - Click here to learn more

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