What does Click to Connect EDI mean for small companies?
It means that we, the DataTrans team, understands small business needs and challenges and focus on ways to level the supply chain playing field with the larger multinationals.
While some of the larger EDI industry vendors like to dazzle their clients with massive applications that do 100 extra neat tricks that no one will ever have time to implement, DataTrans focuses on where can we bring the most value for the smaller competitor. The big guys talk about visibility and collaboration throughout the entire order to cash process lifecycle to give you the perfect purchase order. That is fine if you are a supply chain intellectual at P&G. But our clients don’t want to try to express the grief to a support rep in the Philippians of why they cannot pick and pack a shipment to match the original purchase order. DataTrans clients know they have a supply chain partner who they can trust to handle their mission critical supply chain transactions.
Yesterday we get a call from a small company who is comparing us to one of our competitors. The potential client told us that we were $15 more expensive a month then the competitor. This was after we made our presentation and short demonstration. We understand thin margins especially in the grocery space but from this statement it was obvious that this person has never done B2B EDI before. And these are the types of clients that we like to refer to our competitors.
Fifteen dollars in value can be eaten up in one phone call. What is the value of losing a purchase order? Or not being able to complete a difficult ASN (advance ship notice) in time? Or missing non-compliant labels? A truck load of bad labels could cost $30-40K in chargebacks. How about one’s time, or losing a client, or not being able to handle a new clients requirements in time? Fifteen dollar, eh? How does that saying go? The most valuable lessons are often the most expensive.
Perhaps our competitor says the same thing and they are not only less expensive they are better. So prove it. But how? What are the right questions to ask? We have a couple of tools to help you ask the right questions. Click here for a 20 question online RFP builder and click here for the top 8 questions to ask a potential EDI provider.
Being small business owners ourselves we have come to realize the unique and innate decision making talents that successful small business owners possess. Check out our case studies for some of these high growth business owners. At DataTrans, EDI is our life and Click to Connect™ is all our client needs to know about EDI.