EDI Stories from the Field

Over the years doing EDI consulting we have found that many otherwise successful companies find themselves with great difficulties conducting electronic data exchange with vendors and customers.  We estimate that many companies blindly lose 10 to 30 percent of their revenue to penalties, lost of sales etc.

Story 6: The Penalty Box

While conducting a review of an EDI department for a mid-size manufacturer we again uncovered problems with the EDI invoices.  An invoice being produced by their PeopleSoft system which fails acceptance by their customer's EDI process.  Each time a penalty of 50 to 80 dollars was applied while the invoice is rejected.  The EDI staff noticed the problem and tried correcting the issue by re-sending the invoice.  But did not increase the control number (counter).  The invoice is rejected again and another penalty is applied.  After trying unsuccessfully the third time and getting another penalty the EDI group gives up and the invoice is not paid.   Unfortunately, this was not an isolated event.