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

[Mike Rawlins <mike@rawlinsecconsulting.com>]

Heaven's to Betsy, my little announcement sure has given birth to a 
strange set of discussions.

Let me agree with Frank here.  I run Quickbooks, and by itself it is not 
sufficient to run a small business in an electronic B2B environment. 
 For starters, it doesn't even know how to receive a Purchase Order from 
a customer - you have to create it as an invoice!  Add to that the lack 
of necessary features like maintaining cross references between your 
catalog and the customer's ordering item number, etc.

Even with QuickBooks, the lowest common denominator is pretty low...

Frank. Christopher wrote:

>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
>
>
>

-- 
Michael C. Rawlins, Rawlins EC Consulting
www.rawlinsecconsulting.com