Hello! My name is Jan Westerbarkey.*

*Jan Westerbarkey is the Managing Director of the Westa Group, together with his twin brother, Peter.

Our customers come from various sectors and industries, and we therefore have a number of inspiring comparisons and vivid examples of good business practice. This is why we strongly support the further development of medium-sized businesses and the propagation of EDI, as well as the UN World EDI day.

If you have a little time, I would like to spend the next 7 minutes – you won’t need more than that to read the following pages – explaining a little something to you about EDI and the benefits it can provide you with.

Let me guess ...The following is probably pretty much the way that orders are processed at your company at the moment:

And this works both in ordering system and order processing areas.

I’m really convinced and excited about a process that could save time and money for medium-sized businesses in particular!

When a customer wants to place an order, he contacts you. Perhaps even several times and in various ways. We are dragged back to the data processing Stone Age by such processing procedures.

This method of processing orders and assignments is time-consuming and, thus, also cost-intensive.

If you were to consider the production of a commodity to be like a long rope on which all of the respective sections are attached in a row, …

... then it’s as if a fax or an e-mail cuts through this rope.

The rope has to be subsequently tied back together by hand.

And this creates unnecessary knots which can lead to errors. It doesn’t happen often – but it can happen. And when it does happen?

Then – as we know though experience – this can be very, very annoying and unnecessary!

Totally unnecessary, because there is an electronic ordering and processing system that has actually been on the market for decades, and which could be applied in practically every business sector world-wide!

UNECE

This is EDI!

EDI stands for “Electronic Data Integration” and was developed in the eighties by the World Trade Organisation. It is an arrangement for the electronic transmission of business transactions.

Principally any type of form can be sent as an EDI message. For example:

offers

When we perform a bank transfer via online banking systems, the “quasi grammar” of EDI is behind that transaction.

Because EDI provides an exchange of formalised data, whereby it is predetermined in which succession and which format certain information appears.This language is understood all around the world!

invoice number product codedate

consignor consignee

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

orders credit items bills

status requestscomplaintsdispatchnotifications

change orders

... and several more.

The problem until 2006 was that the grammar was actually based on EDI in various sectors – but no matter whether business transactions were performed with banks, automotive suppliers or sanitary wholesale traders – each had their own dialect.

And then myOpenFactory came along – and achieved, to all intents and purposes, the standardisation of the standard!

And you can now use this to your advantage!

But new data processing equipment or a new system is probably needed for this?

No! It is not!

All that is necessary is to ensure uniformity of article master data, so that one and the same article number always refers to the same article. Then all that one needs to do is to log on to myOpenFactory via a browser. Ready for action!

But that’s probably really expensive and involves a high-maintenance factor?

No! It isn’t and it doesn’t!

... In fact it doesn’t get any cheaper! Because the data sets are sent in an encoded form via the Internet and are, thus, practically free.

No expensive software, no maintenance agreements, no charges for updates. Only companies already using a merchandise information system will have to install a printer driver one time, so that the electronic communication can thus be performed.Therefore, myOpenFactory is pretty cheap for running business operations ...

No more communication costs involved in order processing.No experts needed for maintenance of the system …

... if that doesn’t provide saving potential for money and time, I don’t know what will.

And? Are you curious? You can find more information under www.myopenfactory.de.

Please feel free to make the most of this potential too!

It’s usually a good idea to read a reference book first in order to be able to delve deeper and get a better grasp of a subject. If this is how you like to do things, I would like to recommend „Effiziente Auftragsabwicklung mit myOpenFactory“ (Efficient Order Pro-cessing with myOpenFactory) by Günther Schuh, released in 2007 by HANSER VERLAG.

It explains the main features of business news and information exchange based on case studies. The chapters shine light on the application of myOpenFactory from both suppliers’ and customers’ points of view, and the numerous tables and graphic examples make the chapters very easy to understand. Thus, it soon becomes apparent why “the lowest common denominator” is much more flexible in message standardisation than previous sectoral subsets. And don‘t forget: The 12th of

November is UN World-EDI-day!