Close Encounters of the EDI Kind!

As a setup programmer for B2BGatewaywww.b2bgateway.net , I frequently do work with the same clients. I work almost exclusively behind the scenes. I see the data - product descriptions, UPCs, vendor numbers - but rarely do I learn anything about the client outside of their data. Many of these clients trade with large retail chains which we see everyday such as Best Buy, CVS or Target.

It has become a semi-regular occurance in my life to be walking through a store and come across a product with a hauntingly familiar name. I usually stop and stare for a moment before picking the product up to verify my suspicion. There is a certain sense of accomplishment in recognizing a client product "in the wild". I like to think I had a hand in getting the product to the shelf through the code I spend my days writing. The retailler had to send a purchase order to the client. The client had to send the order to their warehouse for shipping and invoice the retailler. All of these documents process through code I put time and effort into. The more involved or unusual the setup, the more rewarding it is to see the end result on a shelf somewhere.

The clients I work with sell products ranging from food to pharmaceuticals to sporting goods to pet supplies. I can encounter these types of products virtually anywhere. Seeing the result of my work in the real world helps to bring EDI to life.

Jill

Cheng Du!

About a year ago, my favorite Chinese restaurant closed due to a fire. It was one of the worst weeks of my life! There had been two deaths very close to me, and all I wanted was my favorite Chinese food. I went online to check out the menu, only to find out the fine establishment had burned down a few days before. Just my luck! But, as luck would have it, they just opened again! And, this time in a bigger building, with a really nice bar and atmosphere. I went on Sunday night for my anniversary, and to my surprise, it was awesome! Just as I remembered it. Cheng Du is on Washington Street in Stoughton, just a short drive from B2BGateway’s Brockton office www.b2bgateway.net. It’s worth the trip!

Tracy Sheehan, Support Engineer B2BGateway.Net, MA Office

Restoring My Faith In Humanity

B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net connects to Home Depot for a great deal of our clients.
B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net has been connecting to Home Depot since way back in 2000. As I am a very cheap and an impatient person, I spend a great deal of time at Home Depot. Being impatient, I can’t wait for a professional to come and fix something that is broken at my home. Being very cheap, I can’t see paying for that same professional to fix something at my home,… so I do it myself.

At Home Depot, you can walk into the store with no idea how to fix something. If you stand in the right department for long enough someone will help you. Once I stood in the plumbing department staring at a shelf of fittings and another shopper asked me if I needed help. He didn’t help me for any other reason except that I looked like I needed help.

There are not many places left where you can have a perfect stranger walk up to you and ask if you need help. The place that really restores my faith in humanity is the Home Depot parking lot. Without fail, if you are wrestling to get a large sheet of plywood or some other heavy or unwieldy object into your Mini Cooper, someone will offer to help you. I have had people run across the parking lot, (people who would not run if their house was on fire), to offer assistance.

In turn, I have decided to embrace the Home Depot Parking lot code. Now when I load my Mini Cooper up with three 55-Gallon drums of paint, two 4X8 sheets of plywood and a large box of band-aids, I always look around to see if anyone else needs help. Although Home Depot is a “for profit” publically traded company, they have inadvertently created an environment where people treat each other with respect and go out of their way to help each other.

Kevin

Peter 'Gateway' Parker

There’s a very good reason that Spider-Man is one of the most popular comic book characters in existence. He is the everyman. He has issues with his day to day life. Paying rent, keeping a job, keeping a girlfriend. And on the other end, he has to be a superhero saving the day and has to put other people’s needs ahead of his own. He may not be as strong as Superman or as smart as Batman, but we love him all the same.

Now, I don’t want to brag, but B2BGateway.Net www.b2bgateway.net fits the same role that Peter Parker is in. We may not be the biggest EDI company in terms of personnel (as you’ll hear from some of our jealous competitors), but we’re the best around in making EDI easy for our clients. We’ll drop everything to help a client in need and put their needs ahead of our own. Sure, that pizza looks delicious, but if these orders need to go out, then that’s what we need to worry about. If only we could get the web slinging down...

B2BCeption

One of the best movies this year was release a few weeks ago in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Nolan is known for having multilayered, and sometimes confusing, plots. Inception doesn’t shy away from that. For those not in the know, Inception deals with a group of people that can enter dreams and gain the information they need from their target. But a bigger problem comes when they need to create information in a target’s head without him knowing it was planted. It can only be accomplished by going into dreams inside of dreams. Layers inside of layers.

In a way, the multiple layers idea is much like what we do at B2BGateway.Net. On the top layer, our sales team talks to prospective clients and explains the world class service we provide. Go one layer deeper, and we have our Support Engineers that help all of our clients through the EDI process and through any speed bumps they may hit. Another layer down we’ve got the Setup team that gets everything rolling. At this point, we’re three dreams deep and things are so far removed from reality, they might not even exist. But let’s continue, another layer and the Maintenance team helps keep everything running smoothly. And go one layer further, and the Development team is in the background making the website and desktop apps for the client.

Much like the dream levels, the further down you go, the more abstract it becomes. If we’re doing our jobs right, the clients are only aware the Setup team exists, and maintenance and development are hardly seen. So, while we’re a lot like the movie Inception, we sadly don’t have Leonardo DiCaprio. But who knows, he might be a level deeper than Development.

Tom Lynch, Infra Programmer, RI Office

Cool Off

Cool off manufactured by Its2Cool Ltd, is an award winning new product. Using all natural herbs, cool off produces a “Quick Chill” when applied to the skin on a hot day. Can’t escape the mid-day sun? Too much heat? Disbeliever? Try it yourself! Purchase Its2Cool at the following stores Amazon, CVS, HEB, Duane Reade, Mclanes, and Vistar. Its2Cool has been an EDI client of www.b2bgateway.net since January 2010.

Ryan Anderson, Support Engineer, B2BGateway.Net, RI Office

How to Explain EDI

Just how do you explain EDI?

When I first came to B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net , people would ask me what I kind of job I have. The first time I would try to explain EDI as a system of electronic interface that sends invoices and purchase orders between companies. These folks would then just look confused, say “Oh. Ok” and walk away knowing that it sounds about as exciting as selling insurance. I know that there is more than that to EDI but I found it tough to explain it in a single sentence.

I then looked at Wikipedia and used how they explain EDI in a single sentence: “Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner without human intervention.” With that response I got an even more confused reaction and even a few people had their eyes glazed over like it went way over their head.

When I realized that I didn’t have to explain EDI to explain what B2BGateway www.b2bgateway.net does. So I now say to my friends and family: “We help companies do business with other companies electronically.” That sentence is something everyone understands.

It is then I realized that is also what we do here for our clients – we help make it easy for them to do business with other companies and increase their business.

And it only took me 3 years to figure that all out and I still have a lot to learn about EDI.


David Adams, Support Engineer, B2BGateway.Net, MA Office