AW: AW: [ebxml-dev] RE: [EDI-L] Article on ebXML Core Components ...

["Frank. Christopher" <C.Frank@seeburger.de>]

Onk!

Yepp, I agree in a few of your arguments. I should support my earlier
arguments with saying that I was focusing on the B2B relation of SME
where they are acting as suppliers. (Knowing this, my big-fish metaphor
makes more sense, too.)

I don't know about the market share of Quickbooks but I know this:

1. I was one of the students who developed those do-what-I-think
systems, so at least 4 of them ARE out there:-)

2. I have seen a few SME IT infrastructures running and I know this: May
80% use Quickbooks but it is for sure not enough to "run their business"
on it. They utilize those applications to their requirements (as you
said) but usually don't use it to its limits. In my experience SME tend
to run quite strange combinations of applications by paying checks using
Quickbooks and writing quotes using Word and manage stock by an excel
sheet (the smaller the more "strange").
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to ridicule SME and their IT
infrastructure I am just trying to describe my experiences.

2. As long as you talk about book-a-receipt, pay-a-check, let's say
common business processes, I agree with you but still don't think we
need "new ebXML" documents" to describe this interactions.

3. You may are right about "would need 200 words vocabulary" but, at
least SME's acting as supplier, are very often not free in their
decision what B2B standard, format or communication they are using. If
you want to make business with a big company, you better follow their
EDI (oops soory: B2B) guidelines. If your big customer requires you to
accept (and process) a delivery forecast, you better should make
yourself capable to be able to deduct correctly from the forecasted
quantities and deliver on requested schedule the correct articles to the
correct location and you better send the required shipping notice (with
all the data fields your trading partner requires, no matter whether
your inhouse system can deal with it or not).

Best Regard
Christopher


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Todd Boyle [mailto:tboyle@rosehill.net]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 23. April 2002 18:26
An: Frank. Christopher; Christopher Harvey; mike@rawlinsecconsulting.com
Cc: ebxml-dev@lists.ebxml.org
Betreff: Re: AW: [ebxml-dev] RE: [EDI-L] Article on ebXML Core
Components ...


At 01:02 AM 4/23/02, Frank. Christopher wrote:
>Onk!
>
>Following this discussion I (again) get the impression that a huge
count
>of people is waiting for the 1001st definition of a invoice and the
>5096th definition of a purchase order.
>
>Again (I expect) we will face the reality that even SME will require
>branch specific information in their documents and will "interpret"
this
>or that so or different, will use price including tax and the addition
>of tax and net price will not match the total price and so on.

In the U.S., Quickbooks has something like 80% market share.

How do you explain the fact that such an overwhelming percentage
of small businesses are able to run their company with a total
vocabulary of something like 200 data elements, and a single page
invoice and order?

Frank with all due respect, SMEs will *not* have this problem you
describe, interpreting documents. You are neglecting the facts that
in SMEs there is extreme compression of the roles, and that all
of their buying and selling is conducted manually, by people who
will be dead if they're not alert. They already conducted the sale
or purchase personally and they don't sit and maintain diaries
of every detail in their computer, now or ever.

It will be a permanent feature of SMEs, that most sales or purchases
are conducted by ONE person and that they neither need, nor
desire, detailed documentation, detailed contracts, or step-
by-step business process software.  They just need a way to
make their bookkeeping automatic for cash, inventory, payables,
and receivables.

If large Enterprises have a problem processing a standard PO
or invoice with SMEs that's tough luck because SMEs are not
going to start doing extra keypunching just to make things
more convenient for the Enterprises.

I will concede, if the vision of the UMM, CPPA, RegRep and
BCPMC were realized in a piece of software, and it were handed
to SMEs for free, and it was capable of running alongside the
existing accounting system, they might install it.  The very
first thing they would do is configure it to be limited to their
own context (the SME context of 200 words vocabulary), and
limit the documents support to orders and invoices capable
of being understood by Quickbooks.  This is rather like
giving Maserati race cars, capable of 300KPH to every
suburban family in order to speed up the traffic on the
streets where speed limits are never more than 100Kph,
since they won't buy it themselves...

Todd