From a Bigger Picture Perspective.........
Do you ever wonder why you have all these updates on your computer when you boot up in the morning? How about when you first buy a computer you have to spend hours to catch up on all the upgrades? I remember when I started my career in IT back in 1997, Microsoft’s stock price was over $100 per share and then the bottom dropped out. Microsoft had a great product but people only had to buy it once so they didn’t have a consistent revenue stream. Then when the new release came out a couple of years later no one needed to buy it because the original version still worked fine. I could see the marketing department at Microsoft sitting at conference table and pontificating on how they would get people to buy new versions of their products. Then they announced that they were no longer going to support older versions and that forced companies to have to upgrade to newer versions.
The reason I share my experience with you is because the constant changes from the hardware and software companies make it so important for you to stay in support with their products. With the growing number of security issues you can’t afford to let your product go out of support. Remedi has seen a lot of server, operating system, database, etc. upgrades recently where older versions will no longer be supported. Companies have to upgrade their software to new versions at the same time to account for the changes with Microsoft. This is why companies have people who just manage their IT vendors to make sure they are still in support and the licenses do not run out.
Your leadership sees the dollars going out and sometimes they have to make risky decisions to save money. When there is a breach or a shutdown of your systems that interrupts day to day business then companies usually have to spend a lot more money to recover old data or even incur huge fines from their trading partners. After the leadership sees how much money they lose from these shutdowns or fines it makes it easy to sell them the cost benefit analysis of why you need an upgrade schedule. In EDI it is even more imperative to upgrade software and systems, including X12 standards. If your trading partners have upgraded it can change how the data is sent to you and you could get more and more errors with your inbound and outbound documents. If you are not able to trade documents to fulfill your SLA’s your company could be hit with huge fines.
Also, it is imperative to make sure your staff is trained on the newest versions so they are aware of the differences and what to look for to get ahead of any future errors. At Remedi we have been doing this for over 20 years now. Partnering with companies like yourself to evaluate your current EDI systems, recommend upgrade paths, execute the upgrades, and post upgrade support. We have a number of great consultants who have worked with many of our clients who stand ready to assist you and your company with your day to day needs. We have access not only to career consultants, but contract to hire and perm candidates all over US and Canada.
