With Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, reporting that sales have fallen in its home market and saying that conditions in the US remain “challenging”, it looks like we are all feeling the pinch.

In today’s economy, businesses are faced with ever-increasing cost-containment pressures. You already have scarce IT resources to maintain software and infrastructure in order to conduct business with an ever-evolving trading partner community. How could you possibly cut costs without jeopardizing your supply chain operations?
Benefit from Outsourcing Your EDI Operations

Take an experienced team of specialists using best-in-class methodologies and combine it with Inovis’ state-of-the-art network and hosting infrastructure. What you end up with is seamless data exchange and transformation between you and business partners of all sizes and technological sophistication.

Alternatively you could look to Reduce Annual EDI Van Costs by 50%. Deluxe Media consolidated their VANs with InovisWorks and saw significant savings.

How about Decrease Your Order-To-Payment Cycle by looking for an end-to-end EDI solutions increase communication and eliminate points of error.

Wikipedia definition : Managed file transfer (MFT) refers to software solutions that facilitate the secure transfer of data from one computer to another through a network (e.g., the Internet). MFT solutions are often built using the FTP network protocol. However, the term specifically describes solutions that remedy the disadvantages associated with FTP.

The biggest disadvantage with FTP is that it is not an option for secure file transfer. Safely exchanging high-value and high-volume files is a must-have for all enterprises, especially banks and insurance providers that regularly transfer files containing ACH transfers, check images and customer account information.  Other problems with FTP is that it is typically not monitored or audited, creating ongoing risks to audit failures and lost data.

Modernizing your data transmission process and deploying a managed file transfer platform can lower staff resources, reduce software maintenance fees and improve customer satisfaction.

There are plenty of choices out there. However, make sure that the company providing these services can also offer a reliable service. Inovis offers you a Tier-4 Data Center, “always-on” reliability with 99.995% service levels and a single hosted platform across all partners, providers and customers

Did you act or are you still trying to find the time? Time has run out, but there are still plenty of people out there who can help.

If you received the letter from BT EDI*Net, then there are plenty of companies out there that can help you. Inovis is just one of them. And if you’d like to know more about what Inovis offers, you can read up on our VAN services.

If you have already changed, don’t forget to inform your trading community, so that they can advise their own VAN network to change the interconnect details

We are here to help you, whatever your needs.

Last month Freeway Inovis announced the launch of their Advanced Shipping Notes (ASN) Consolidator Portal.

This solution will help suppliers of all sizes meet the electronic ASN requirements of retailers such as B&Q, John Lewis, House of Fraser, Homebase, Sainsburys and Tesco. The retailers are increasingly requiring the use of electronic ASN’s to more accurately track the movement of goods from suppliers, enabling them to forecast when deliveries will be received and optimise stock levels for better warehouse and storage efficiency.

In conjunction with this, Inovis continues to help Tesco to get its thousands of grocery and non-food suppliers up to speed with the electronic trading system it wants them to use.

It was interesting to see this week, in the SystemiNetwork news letter that Movex is still alive and kicking. The popular Movex ERP application is from Swedish firm Intentia, but is now known as M3 owned by the ERP giant Lawson Software.

The article mentions “that well over 80% of M3 users are running on the i.”

Movex has been integrated with the EDI translator TrustedLink iSeries (TLI) on many customer sites, and it would be interesting to know if there was anyone out there integrating this with M3? Would be great to hear from you.

In my blog in November of last year I asked, “How reliant is your Company on EDI?” I have 2 further questions for you.

What would happen if you were trying to get month end through and your system just stopped?
What about those time critical orders? What would happen if your EDI system couldn’t process them?

This week, one of our TrustedLink iSeries (TLI) support consultants made the comment that she had come across 6 companies in 1 week who had problems after not regularly running a purge.

If you want to avoid that dreaded IBM message: ‘Maximum numbers of objects reached,’ which is an OS/400 restriction, then devote a little time to setting up the concurrent purge now available in TLi V6.3

Gwyn Madsen posted a blog in November last year promoting additional functionality in the latest version of TrustedLink iSeries (TLi) V6.3.
Improved TLi Data and Object Management
- Run 24/7, 365 days a year without interruption as the purge/archive process can now be executed concurrently with normal TLi operations running.
- Communication Session Retention Settings & IFS Purge inclusion

So there are no excuses; run a purge today to stop problems in the future.

Ever needed to bounce ideas off of someone else who is using TrustedLink iSeries on a regular basis? Did you know that there is a TLi User Group that may be able to help you?

The TLi User Group is a discussion group dedicated to the users of Inovis’ TrustedLink series of EDI Translation Software. No matter which version you have – this group is all about Inovis TrustedLink i-series (for the IBM System I or I-series or whatever they’re calling it this time). You can hopefully learn new tricks and techniques, find information, get a question answered or even – better yet – share your tricks & techniques and information and answer a question or two!

Also take a look at the Community pages on the Inovis Customer Portal. This area provides you the ability to create, converse, and collaborate with peers in your user community. Some of the exciting new features existing within this section include:
• Support Knowledge Base
• Wiki
• Customer FAQ Channel
• Latest Inovis News and Events
• Discussion section for our User Communities.

The Customer Portal will also allow you to access the Inovis Knowledge Base and the latest documentation.