B2B Data Integration and Transformation Blog

In celebration of our 20th Anniversary, I have been looking at EDI and what's changed.  Surprisingly, while some core issues have changed, EDI itself has evolved, but in my opinion, really not changed much.  Of course, technology has come a long way!

In going through my "archive", I ran across an interesting list published in 1998 by Thomson EC Resources.

Ten Major Challenges an EC/EDI Manager must Conquer to be World Class in the 21st Century

Technology is constantly changing and so are the ways we work.  Integration positions come in many varieties.  These days, Integration experts are onsite, remote, consultants, long standing employees for large corporations, and some are completing your IT project while walking on a treadmill!  While technology trends change, so do our employment trends….and some of these new trends in offices can be downright strange! 

Over the course of the last several years we have found that innovation, or more like lack of innovation, has been one of the leading reasons why clients have researched, purchased, and deployed new modern integration solutions.

Do you remember when calling your customers, suppliers, and transportation carriers for their EDI specs or informing them of system changes was the primary form of communication?  Then it moved on to emailing them back and forth.  After that, there were several websites that gathered the pertinent information, usually for a particular industry, and you could "Sign up and be connected to all your trading partners". This never seemed to work as well as everyone hoped.