The advantages of EDI Outsourcing:

As you have likely discovered, good EDI specialists are difficult to find AND Establishing an EDI department can be a frustrating task.  You can turn to 1 EDI Source's EDI Outsourcing Services.

Without an extensive knowledge of EDI, one risks many expensive errors, such as an investment in inappropriate hardware and software or dependence on inexperienced personnel. It is difficult to gauge a potential employee’s EDI knowledge without extensive EDI experience of your own. EDI demands extreme attention to detail, constant review and supervision, and complete accuracy in order to be successful. One small error could result in hours of troubleshooting—all of which results in lost time and money.

1 EDI Source goes to extreme measures to find highly qualified EDI programmers. Our programmers go through rigorous training in our products, working their way up through a series of technical levels—first-line support, premier support, and EDI specialist-before they are qualified as EDI outsourcing consultants.

One of the most common—and least anticipated—problems experienced by companies that maintain their EDI processing in-house is high employee turnover. Time and again companies have come to us in a state of emergency, having lost a vital component of their EDI team. More often than not, the employee has failed to give ample notice, and the scramble to find a reasonable substitute often proves to be exhausting and unsuccessful. With 80 percent of EDI knowledge coming from sheer experience, it is imperative to have not only a reliable and experienced EDI programmer but also a dependable back-up person. 1 EDI assures you such personnel, as every outsourcing project has at least one senior-level back-up person who can assume the necessary responsibility at any given time. These emergency back-up consultants alone make outsourcing invaluable.

An often-overlooked benefit of outsourcing your EDI department is that it allows valuable personnel to spend the hours that would need to be allotted to EDI to other vital activities of your business. Furthermore, companies that use outsourcing are able to avoid the considerable expense of training and supporting new employees in EDI. The annual cost of this outsourcing proposal would hardly equal half the salary of a dedicated EDI company employee notwithstanding the human resources cost of insurance, vacation, and other fringe benefits.

1 EDI Source brings over 15 years of EDI expert experience to the table. Setting up a new, effective EDI system is tricky, even for experienced programmers. The path is littered with potential mistakes, most of which we have already overcome, accounted for, and developed solutions for avoiding. EDI is a very unorthodox field. Dealing with its intricacies, twists, turns, and surprises necessitates having a strong background in the field and a quick, reactive mind.

Taking into consideration the potential financial cost for downtime, training curves, back-up personnel, and the necessary expertise needed for a competent installation or custom addition, outsourcing becomes a totally viable and cost-effective solution for EDI needs.

1 EDI Source will run your day-to-day EDI operations. We will review reports, print out logs, run sessions, do back-ups, maintain all software components, complete custom projects, and respond to all trading partner inquiries. Furthermore, we will do it quickly and efficiently, and with the utmost professionalism.

With the hosting infrastructure that 1 EDI Source has created, our clients are able to provide a level of service to their trading partners that only the largest organizations would be able to match. Infrastructure is expensive. Why build your own when you can share ours?

Redundant Power: our massive uninterruptable power supply is capable of running our entire facility for an hour. This is further backed up by a large natural gas generator which needs no refuling and is therefore capable of sustaining normal operation indefinitely

Redundant Internet Connections: multiple Internet connections from different providers ensures that we maintain connectivity even through the loss of any individual connection.

Cooling: servers give off heat, and a lot of it. Our high capacity cooling system is connected to our redundant power system, and is further backed up by a powerful blower venting system that can rapidly purge hot air should the cooling system need to be serviced.

Security: card access security, video surveillance, multiple firewalls, enterprise anti-virus and monitoring software ensure that our hosting facility is secured from any unauthorized access, physical or virtual.

Offsite Hosting: a secondary hosting facility, located several miles from the primary facility, is kept in a constant warm standby, ready to assume responsibility of hosting critical processes and customers in the event of a loss of the primary facility

Robotic Backups: high capacity robotic backup units ensure that all critical data is backed up nightly. Offsite storage of these backups ensure that the secondary facility is ready to come online rapidly

Database Redundancy: our Microsoft SQL Server 2005 cluster with RAID storage ensures that your data remains available even with the loss of a server or disk. Multiple levels of backups ensure that all data for this critical resource is safely archived.

Processing Redundancy: utilizing EDI Complete Enterprise, our EDI processing continues even through the loss of one or more machines. The load balancing and failover capabilities ensure that we have the capacity and the availability you need.

With multiple levels of outsourcing available, we have a plan that will fit your needs.  From server co-location to full identity management, 1 EDI Source has the knowledge and infrastructure to represent your business.

Server Co-location: your server resides in our hosting facility. You enjoy the resources of our primary hosting facility. Optionally, provisions can be made to facilitate failover to our secondary hosting facility.

Server virtualization: virtualization allows a single machine to run multiple operating systems at once. With this technology, your company can share resources with other companies when the purchase of a dedicated server isn't justified.

EDI Integration and Representation: 1 EDI’s primary objective is to secure a strong business relationship centered around the welfare of your company’s EDI operations, beginning with a sound plan of action, then ensuring a successful setup and implementation of the software, and culminating in seamless daily operations.