Electronic Data Interchange comes of age in the UK with the EDI’88 conference With the UK’s annual conference on paperless trading now into its second year, Electronic Data Interchange is enjoying a phenomenal surge of interest as business communities assess its potential as a tool to penetrate the coming Single European Market. EDI ’88, held a few weeks back, has doubled in size, and was the venue for a series of announcements from government, suppliers and trade associations which added up to convey a powerful plug for the emerging standard. The main theme of guest speaker Sir John Harvey Jones’ keynote address, repeated throughout the conference, is that Electronic Interchange should not be treated as a technology but as a set of business practices. Such a view entails recasting the mould of an organisation as a company restructures the way it does its business, a task by no means eased by cultural antagonism to paperless methods of communication. A recent report by the Langton Ltd London consultancy based on interviews with companies who have implemented systems cites the management and coordination aspects of Electronic Data Interchange as top of the list of challenges facing the potential user. In particular the authors cite the importance of internal coordination streamlining functions such as distribution, marketing, purchasing, manufacturing and finance. Above all a thorough grasp of internal and external information flows is required. The thorny issue of standards continues to deter some companies from taking the plunge, but the growing status of the EDIfact standard, which has been accepted by the UK and the rest of the European Community with Japan also falling in line, should be sufficient enticement. In the meantime, Langton puts the market for Electronic Data Interchange network services and connection software at UKP6m for 1988, and proponents still confidently predict that it will prove the medium for cutting through the EC paper mountain.
DEC promises multi-network strategy on its Data Interchange offering DEC says its VAX/EDI Electronic Data Interchange system will now support Istel’s Edict value added network in addition to the International Network Services Tradanet network. Launched in July this year VAX/EDI provides data interchange capability for VAX/VMS users for the first time. According to Mark Selby, DEC’s European Electronic Data Interchange programme manager, the company’s intention is to provide Interchange customers with a multi-network capability. With pan-European forecasts predicting that the market for such services will exceed $1,500m by 1993, DEC says it will extend support to include other services as well as the Edifact and Odette standards. In parallel with its multi network support strategy Selby said DEC’s Data Interchange programme will encompass the X400 message handling as well as the X25 packet-switching standards.
Istel and International Network Service bow to user pressure on interlinking Demands from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and Vanguard for Istel Ltd and the GE Information Services-ICL International Network Services partnership to connect their Edict and Tradanet networks have finally borne fruit. The two companies have announced that customers of either network will be able to exchange documents from the beginning January. Pleas for the providers to co-operate on this issue have previously been resisted on the grounds of commercial difficulties in tariffing the service plus disagreement on the technical nature of the link. Now users of the gateway mailbox link will pay a one-off UKP1,500 membership fee plus a charge for volumes of traffic sent to the rival network and numbers of trading relationships established which the service moniters for security purposes. International Network Services and Istel say that they will maintain identical tariffs for these housekeeping and traffic charges.
Vanguard reports from the front line The UK government-sponsored Vanguard campaign, which has been promoting Electronic Data Interchange since the autumn
of 1986 has emerged from a quiescent period and was able to report a number of new initiatives. User communities from the aerospace, agrochemical, pharmaceutical and textile industries have moved towards Electronic Interchange implementation as a result of the Department of Trade & Industry awareness-raising campaign, said Eric Forth, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Industry and Commerce. Trials are already underway in the aerospace and agrochemical sectors with one planned within the brewing and fish farming communities. Vanguard campaign has been going after vertical industry sectors for the past year since a plan to tour the regions with a road show had to be scrapped because of low interest. In addition, Forth reported the conclusions of two studies into standards commissioned by Vanguard. First he claimed that the flowering of different standards should not inhibit the spread of the data exchange, given that a common building block now exists in the form of EDIfact, the generic standard being promoted worldwide. The second study examines the use of Data Interchange using the X400 store-and-forward messaging standard.
Sitpro, British Standards Institution patch over differences to form team Sitpro, the Simpler Trade Procedures Board, which has been a key force driving Electronic Data Interchange in the UK has merged its standardisation efforts with those of the British Standards Institution. Sitpro chief executive Ray Walker denied that the move is a response to pressure from the Department of Trade & Industry to rationalise resources and said that Sitpro made its first overtures two years ago. Currently standards are either channelled through the United Nations Committee or the Open Systems Interconnection/CEN route which have different procedural requirements taking three and five years respectively. The merger has patched over differences that have existed between the organisations since 1986. In addition Sitpro has tightened up its activities with the announcement of a schedule of activity to take it up to 1993. New corporate strategy will focus on increasing trading opportunities within the Pacific Rim where the majority of the world’s manufacturing will be carried out by the Year 2000; promoting awareness of Electronic Data Interchange among senior management; and reducing its dependence on government grants by marketing services and software.
