Two Quick Thoughts: We've Seen Your Ugly Mug Before!

Posted by Charley Hughes on Dec 16, 2014 3:32 PM


A Helpful Tip and a Good Question to Ponder.

You know your favorite white coffee cup or tea mug sitting on your desk or by the sink in the break room?   I bet yours is like most of ours.   Even though you wash it regularly, one day you look down and nearly die of embarrassment because it’s so stained on the inside.  It now sports a light brown color inside that looks nothing like its pristine white exterior.  And the stain won’t wash out no matter how hard you try.   

How did this happen and what will you do about it?  And quickly!  Before someone else notices.

image_(6)Good news!  Just as quickly as the unsightliness snuck up on you, I can help you remove it.  Try this suggestion and your cup will be clean again.  Better yet, share this tip and others will marvel at your wisdom.   Best of all, use this tip as an object lesson for your EDI team and you will get them thinking.

For fun, select the grossest coffee cup in the break room cabinet or among your EDI team for this experiment.

  1. Fill the cup as full as possible (overflowing a little) with HOT water.   
  2. Drop in 1 or 2 Efferdent denture cleaning tablets.
  3. Walk away for 8 hours and ponder the question at the bottom of this brief blog (Don’t read ahead).

You can put the cup on a paper towel or plate if you are concerned about any unanticipated effects from any overflow of the Efferdent (though I’ve never seen any).    When you come back 8 hours later you will be amazed at how gleaming bright the inside of your cup has become.  If you have two equally ugly mugs clean one and use the other as a control subject for comparison.  Or, if you only have one ugly mug you can fill it up halfway with hot water and witness the difference in the same cup.  The bottom half will sparkle while the top half remains gross.   Either way, you’ll be surprised at the contrast.  

Thoughts to Ponder

Now to the question that you and your EDI team should ponder during or after this fun little experiment: 

How clean is your current EDI system, really?  Think carefully!  After all, you thought your cup was clean, and while it still performed its function, in reality an ugly unacceptable buildup was sneaking up on you daily.   

How many failed transactions, bloated logs and archives, workarounds, bolt-ons, dead or unused processes, unnecessary pre or post processing routines, manual processes, inactive trading partners, or opportunities for data entry errors exist because of gaps in system integration?  As we speak these issues and unknown others are slowly forming an ugly “film” on the inside of your EDI system and business processes.   How did this happen and what will you do about it?  And, quickly!  Before someone else notices.

So run this mug exercise with your team, and schedule a meeting to ponder the things that are silently lurking and growing in your system.  Especially if your organization has a system upgrade or migration in its future where EDI is the system being upgraded or migrated or plays a role as an important dependency for other systems.     

Better yet, call Remedi to learn how we help EDI departments just like yours discover what’s lurking beneath the surface.  Our experts are professionals who work seamlessly with you to perform an EDI system health check that can help identify today's issues before they become tommorrow's problems. 

Our name isn’t just a coincidence.

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