Stop us if you’ve heard this one. A CEO, a CFO, and a CIO walk into a bar to ease their suffering. And what are they suffering from? Failure to Deliver Syndrome or FTDS. It’s a lousy joke, but a real problem.
FTDS is what happens when big, ambitious transformation initiatives, including EDI modernization projects, fail to bridge the gap between expectations and ROI. Often, technology gets the blame. In our view, that’s not always the case.
The culprit behind FTDS is more often a people and process problem, not the platform itself. This article explains why that is and how you can keep your big initiatives on track—and deliver the results leadership and stakeholders are counting on.
What are the Symptoms of FTDS?
While FTDS may be a term we coined for this article, the symptoms are real and likely familiar to readers of this blog. They include:- Projects that drag on past the go-live with unresolved issues that pile up
- Internal teams showing signs of burnout or slowed momentum during critical phases
- Leadership sees progress reports but not value
- The gap between the project goals and actual business outcomes keeps getting wider
Every project with transformative potential is a marathon, not a sprint. Such projects, whether a migration to the cloud or a new ERP, are going to hit unforeseen integration snags. Periods of tough sledding are normal. But occasional friction doesn’t have to slow momentum or delay time to value.
Why the Choice of Technology Isn’t Usually the Reason Projects Fail to Deliver
When we founded Remedi in 1994, EDI platforms offered non-technical users no visibility into production, payment, or shipping data. They were situated on-premises and in addition to the software licensing, required hardware to buy and maintain.
Modern EDI systems offer a number of distinct benefits. They can be deployed in the cloud, avoid hardware expenses, integrate with APIs, and allow non-IT users to access critical business and customer data without IT intervention.
Yet for all their advances and value to enterprises, modern EDI systems don’t automatically integrate with today’s cloud-based ERP and business systems. The truth is, most of them work as advertised. What’s missing are professionals who know how to make them work in your environment, with your systems, apps, and trading partners.
With teams shrinking and demands growing, veteran EDI professionals who understand the complex connections and communication flows that drive modern supply chains are increasingly hard to find. And those internal resources who remain are often diverted to urgent production support.
As a result, the organization finds itself with skills gaps or lacks the bandwidth to execute at the level a transformation demands. Technology isn’t the problem, but capacity.
Building a Resilient Team for Transformation Success
Resilience is about alignment, ownership, and continuity. Day in and day out, resilience means a team that can adapt as priorities shift and who understand how system changes affect the business and its trading partners.
In previous eras, expanding the team through increasing headcount was a proven way to build resilience. In the current climate, that’s not always an option for IT and integration leaders.
What many customers we support have found is that adding experienced professionals for these large transformation projects can make a tremendous difference in outcomes.
That’s because extending your internal team with qualified EDI resources to manage, monitor and resolve issues within your existing tools and support the journey to new ones allows you to focus on strategic initiatives, not fire alarms.
How Remedi Helps You Transform Project Risk into ROI (and Avoid FTDS)
Regardless of which vendor you engage, you want an EDI partner that offers the following capabilities:
- Adaptive communication skills to ensure project accountability, collaboration, and desired outcomes
- Deep platform expertise across leading EDI and B2B integration tools, including IBM, Cleo, Boomi, and SEEBURGER
- Active system monitoring to catch and resolve issues before they impact ops, revenue, or relationships
When large, transformative projects are supported by qualified resources, you decrease the risk of adverse outcomes. At the same time, you increase the odds of delivering the ROI leadership needs to see.
To discuss how Remedi Managed EDI Services can help your projects build integration resiliency, reach out here to learn more.
Other Blogs in the Integration Resilience Series:
How EDI Managers Can Meet Pressure to Deliver Results Without Adding Headcount
FAQs
- What causes Failure to Deliver Syndrome (FTDS)?
FTDS happens when big, ambitious transformation initiatives such as EDI modernization projects and ERP migrations fail to bridge the gap between expectations and ROI. It can also include scope creep and missed go-live deadlines.
- How is Remedi Managed EDI different from traditional staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation boosts internal capacity and targets critical tasks such as cleaning up onboarding backlogs. A managed EDI team from Remedi supports your team over a sustained period, say six months or more. The longer duration is needed to support the design, implementation, testing, and stabilization phases of large-scale projects, and can perpetuate into ongoing operations support thereafter.
- Does engaging experienced EDI professionals lead to better project outcomes?
Veteran EDI and B2B integration specialists understand system dependencies, trading-partner communication, and the workflows of production support. Their experience keeps projects from stalling when complexity spikes.
- Does managed EDI services replace our internal EDI team?
No. We become part of your team for an extended period of time. We supplement where needed, take ownership of designated phases or task groups, and bring platform expertise and outside experience.
- How does Remedi managed EDI support help reduce project risk?
Ideally, Remedi Managed EDI resources stay engaged for the full duration to manage, monitor, and resolve issues with the tools you already use. This frees internal teams to focus on strategic priorities and milestones.
