When I first took up the 'profession' of sales in the 70s, the school of thought was that by leading a conversation and using certain techniques, it was possible to get someone to buy what you were selling. In my case it was photocopy machines. There were two key phrases that were popular at the time, and fortunately both (along with the whole manipulative sales approach) have pretty much fallen out of favor. I bring this up because in our last survey, we asked one of those key phrases; "What would it take for you to switch EDI provider." Read more...

Last week we sent out a survey asking about your perceptions of SaaS, Cloud computing, and Hosted solutions. Of course we were interested in EDI solutions, but the question is a generic one that applies to any application. The responses we received ranged from fairly detailed explanations of each, to "I don't know what these are." So for those who are unfamiliar with the differences, here is a primmer on the major differences and some discussion of the advantages of each. This falls far short of a full detailed explanation, but the basic concepts are accurate. Read more...

Last week we asked about your experiences with EDI deployments in a 3 part survey. Which of the 3 parts you answered, depended on your position in the supply chain (Supplier, Buyer, or Software provider), but the questions were fairly similar. The reason for the segmentation was that we wanted to know more about what experiences diverged or transcended the differences in position... and you were clear about your opinions. Read more...