- What is the current focus of your company's business?

Guerriere - Owens Direct is focused on offering a complete outsourced EDI/business-to-business e-Commerce solution.

- How has this focus changed in the last 2 years?

Guerriere - We have expanded our focus. Over the last two years our focus has shifted from offering outsourced EDI solutions mainly for small and mid-size domestic retail suppliers to offering complete outsourced business commerce solution for international suppliers across all industries.

- What are your current initiatives?

Guerriere - Owens Direct is working to extend the reach of EDI across all industries. The retail supplier base has the most mature EDI market. Every large regional and national retailer understands the necessity of having all suppliers online electronically. Enabling these suppliers has been the base of our business. However, Owens Direct has been educating large companies outside the retail space on the competitive advantages of connecting suppliers electronically based on EDI standards. There seems to be an endless number of opportunities in the energy, healthcare, construction, international trade, and government sectors. These industries are almost exclusively passing paper. The return on investment for implement EDI is high for any company in these industries. However, it is a long sales cycle because the potential users need to be educated about the entire field of e-Commerce. It begins with the basics: 'What is EDI?' and 'How will it affect me, my job, and my supplier?' and 'Why do we need to adhere the standard for business commerce?'.

- How has the market for EDI changed with the impact of the Internet?

Guerriere - The EDI industry has evolved from large companies transmitting non-standard data directly between each other in the mid-1970s, to the birth of the private network, VANs, and eventually to standards-based transactions in the mid-1980s. Then, in the late 1980s to mid 1990s EDI moved to the PC, enabling EDI roll-outs to a larger supplier base. Up to that point, the industry was relatively small. There were only a dozen EDI vendors with over $1MM in revenue and none of them had revenues over $300MM. But these EDI vendors boasted a healthy bottom line with a 25-35% profit margin.

Then in 1995 the industry made its last significant change. The Internet became available to the masses. At the time Netscape was going public, so was a lesser known company named Premenos. Premenos proclaimed the death of the VAN with its new product called Templar. Templar enabled secured EDI to be transmitted over the Internet directly between trading partners in a real-time environment. Premenos then released the Templar specs, which have evolved to what we know today as AS1, 2, and 3. The EDI-INT, EDI over the Internet standards (AS1-3), has made EDI more accessible and more affordable to more companies. It has also driven VAN pricing down in the same way long distance telephone charges have been driven down by Internet-enabled phone services.

Today, with easy access to high speed and wireless Internet connections, another movement is taking place; software as a service. Companies no longer need to make the capital investment in software and hardware. They don't need to hire professionals to run the systems. Enterprise EDI systems are now seen as a monthly expense. With common processes, timeliness of information, and redundant systems, it just makes sense to manage EDI as an outsourced network level service.

- What are the greatest challenges for your customers? How are you helping your customers address these challenges?

Guerriere - The greatest challenge of our subscribers is the variety of demands from the subscriber's customers. This is why Owens Direct is in business. There is no one simple standard coming from these customers. Our challenge is to make the experience as plug-and-play as possible. Our motto: EDI as easy as e-mail. Many of the subscriber's customers are not within the standards of EDI. Many of these customers make it even more difficult by mandating proprietary formats and providers or charging outrageous testing fees. I have seen some testing fees as high as $5,000! Owens Direct mainly works with small to mid-size companies that are most affected by these requirements. We work to minimize the cost and time of implementation for our subscribers. It is no wonder that these companies miss the old simple standard of EDI via FAX. There are still 2,000,000 fax machines sold each year. We would like to change that statistic. But the industry needs to work together better than it does today in order to accomplish this kind of change.

- What is your stance on the eC-BP organization and tenets?

Guerriere - I believe the eC-BP is a necessary medium for EDI vendors to agree on some base business principles in order to accelerate the growth of EDI/business commerce industry. The tenets are simple, straight-forward steps to increase the adoption of EDI. Furthermore, by increasing the adoption of EDI, we are not only improving our own companies but the ROI of our clients. How could an EDI vendor object to the eC-BP or its tenets?