You only hear from your 'customers' when something bad happens, your sales department complains about how long it takes to 'hook up' their customers on marketplace connections, and you're constantly given grief by the SAP team about inbound documents erroring out in the interface. Is that just the nature of the EDI beast, or are you doing something very wrong?

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In my copious free time over the holidays, I managed to knock off a few of the books that had stacked up on me. Although I tend to stick to mysteries, thrillers, spy novels, and stuff like that, I occasionally find a biography that interests me. I couldn’t wait to read the Steve Jobs bio written by Walter Isaacson, and it was a winner. Even if you don’t like Apple products and you may not give a hoot about its recently deceased leader, you’ll still find it fascinating.

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IT management, like any other management, requires finesse and tact. People skills are essential when dealing with anyone, but IT people are generally more withdrawn than most. People who are naturally more "people-oriented" tend to gravitate to more customer service or human resource type positions. There are frequently less conversations over the water cooler in IT than in other departments. This is not to say that either group is "better" than the other, only different.

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I've heard from quite a few of our readers on my article in February around the ROI of trading business transactions electronically. Many of you do have an understanding of the Value that EDI provides to your Supply Chain where others know that doing EDI makes sense but can't or don't have a formal method of knowing what the true ROI is to your organization. One theme that I did hear and was surprise about, is that even those who do have a ROI calculation may not know if they are indeed getting the ROI they have reported to upper management. Read more...