What is the current focus of your company's business?
Brewer: Our focus is small and medium businesses who want to have EDI capability with their trading partners and who want to save time so that they can focus on growing their business. We want every client to feel like they are our only client. We deliver on our focus with easy-to-use Web based EDI solutions and talented EDI professionals who work behind the scenes to take care of all of the headaches involved with EDI implementations and who provide great service when our clients need it.
Our name CovalentWorks really says it all. "Covalent" means strong bonds – We want to do a great job of taking care of our clients' EDI relationships so that have strong bonds with their trading partners. "Works" is short for network because we connect our clients with any of their trading partners that require EDI of them. We feel like the best way to deliver this kind of service is with a web based solution that is accessible on any PC in the world that has an internet connection. Our clients don't have time to install and maintain software.
How has this focus changed in the last 2 years?
Brewer: Our focus has not changed in the last 2 years. Many small and medium size businesses don't want to buy and maintain expensive EDI software. They prefer our web based EDI solutions that only require them to have internet access. What has changed in our SMB market in the last 3 years is that broadband internet access has become both affordable and reliable, and at the same time companies like Salesforce.com have helped grow the market's acceptance of web based solutions.
One of the reasons our focus has not changed during the last two years is that we are specialists who want to be really good at delivering on our promises to our clients. We are not trying to be all things to all people. For example, we don't market to large companies or hubs because their requirements are different. We don't try to invent new transaction types or new formats. Our clients' EDI trading partners know what they want and our job is to make sure they get it.
Our approach to growing our business is clearly evolutionary and not revolutionary. The revolutionary phase of our business was 5 years ago when we chose to exclusively offer a web based solution and chose to stop selling software. We feel like a significant portion of the market that we focus on appreciates the value of our solutions. Our challenge now is constant improvement.
What are your current initiatives?
Brewer: Our current initiatives revolve around operational excellence in support of our focus. I believe that every business can always be improved, and even more importantly, that there is not an end to the process of improvement. We strive to be a little better each week. For our clients, that means service that includes automatically upgrading them when their EDI trading partner's requirements change. It also means listening to feed back from our clients and constantly improving our solutions.
As I mentioned earlier, we want each client to feel like they are our only client. To achieve this we have to have effective internal systems and processes to support our team. Internally, our initiatives this year centered on improving our best practices and implementing new systems. One of our key best practice improvements was in testing. We have recently implemented an improved client relationship management system. This enables our entire team to better serve our clients. We use the same system to provide better service to our clients' trading partners as well.
How has the market for EDI changed with the impact of the Internet?
Brewer: The internet made our business possible. Without the internet we would not be able to deliver a web based solution.
One of the most important impacts of the internet on the market for EDI is that it has helped to reduce the cost of EDI and make it affordable for more companies that could not afford it in the past. More companies using EDI expands the market which is good for the entire industry.
What are the greatest challenges for your customers?
Brewer: Our clients are time starved. They want to grow their businesses and at the same they have competitive pressures that are now global in nature. They have their hands full and they don't have time to worry with the difficulties of implementing EDI for their trading partners and upgrading EDI with their existing trading partners.
How are you helping your customers address these challenges?
Brewer: By taking care of EDI, we free up time for our clients so that they can focus on growing their business and staying ahead of their competition. Our complete solution means we take care of the testing and implementation of EDI with their new trading partners as well as upgrading their existing trading partners. Because our solution is web based, their IT infrastructure is totally independent of our solution. They are free to manage their IT assets on the time table that suits them with out worrying about how it affects their ability to be EDI compliant with their trading partners.
Who should pay for testing?
Brewer: Each trading partner should pay for their own testing. Both EDI trading partners in a relationship have a responsibility to test and then deliver data reliably.
How do you categorize 'good' testing versus 'bad' or useless testing?
Brewer: This is one of my favorite topics for several reasons: testing is a key component of effective EDI, and it is an area where investment in best practices really pays off.
Good testing is doing a good job of sending test transactions that have been thoroughly checked before they are sent. Bad testing is relying on your trading partner to catch errors. The golden rule applies here i.e. treat others the way you would like to be treated. What that means is doing your best to follow the trading partner's EDI guidelines on every test.
Our objective is to pass all tests on the first try. We have software to identify errors and probable errors before a test is sent. We thoroughly check tests against the trading partner's EDI guidelines and our clients' trading partners appreciate that.
While we are on the subject of good testing I would like to add that we have found that timely communication during testing is a best practice. At the latest, phone calls and emails should be returned within one half a business day during testing. And again the golden rule applies: if you respond quickly then your trading partner is much more likely to respond quickly too. No one wants testing to stretch out unnecessarily over an extended time frame.
What is your stance on the eC-BP organization and tenets?
Brewer: The eC-BP tenents address important industry issues that need to be improved in order to grow the market. We would like to see the market grow rather than just taking market share from competitors. We are all about freedom of choice. All of our agreements with our clients are month-to-month rather than long term contracts because we believe that our clients will stay with us for life as long as we provide great service and value.