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The vast improvement in EDI technology and it acceptance among user in the past year has
resulted the increase of provider in the market. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by
the wide range of solutions available, however,
there are a few factors to consider when
selecting an EDI service provider in order for you to make the best choice
possible.
Vendor Viability
It is vital to carefully look at
the company's financial viability, credit quality, profitability,
provider's experience with the desired applications, knowledge of the
organization's industry, IT staff availability, and security provisions.
If the company is not able to survive, its customers are open to
financial risks including the not insignificant costs of switching providers.
There might be some
companies which
it may not be possible to review their financial statements.
In these case, user should take into consideration as to how
they are funded, how they have raised working capital,
how many
IT employees are there in the company,
what are the company prospective etc. The
vendor viability question should be more prominent when interviewing
prospective providers.
Network Effects
The more hub relations a company has in place, the more connections can
be made between points. In other words, if you are a supplier to ten
retailers, and a service company has connected to only one of them, you will
need to either use two companies, or get your provider to implement the other
nine connections. It's much more efficient to go to a single provider that has
the benefits of being tied to a large number of hubs.
Technology Platform
Check that the technology and the platform that supports, it is viable
for the long term. Most larger networks normally invest in more
secure, stable, and scalable backend, so, these larger companies normally have better infrastructures.
Understand the
company's current platform and its plans, then find out how it plans to provide
the resources to deliver on its plans.
Customer Care
Check the company's
references, and get to understand the depth of their investment in their own
customer support infrastructure. Ensure that the company has a variety of ways
to deliver service. Whether they have experts focused on managing your
application, state-of-the-art environment to support your application,
fast turnaround on requests etc. It's important that they are able to work
the way you want and need. |
