West London Institute's experience of implementing EDI ordering
| Pages | 19-21 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040522 |
| Published date | 01 January 1994 |
| Author | Penny Lyndon,Anne Russell,Colin Lockhart |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
BLCMP and EDI
West London Institute's
experience of implementing
EDI ordering
by Penny Lyndon, Anne Russell and
Colin Lockhart, West London Institute
of Higher Education
The launch of EDI
Electronic transmission of orders is not a new idea.
For some years it has been possible to order from
the larger book suppliers online, with the advan-
tage of being able to interrogate their holdings
first. For us though, as customers of BLCMP, the
situation was complicated. Our acquisitions
software covers the financial side to ordering at the
time of order creation — prices are committed to
funds as the order is made. Orders sent online to
our suppliers on one system would have had to be
entered again on our BLCMP system so that the
order file and funds could be kept up to date.
Although we were interested in a faster form of
creating our orders, we were not interested in
duplicating work.
The breakthrough for us took place in December
1992 at the BIC/National Acquisitions Group's
EDI the future of library supply seminar. Speakers
were generally looking forward to the prospect of
EDI, although speculated that there could be
problems with reaching agreements on standards
and other legal complications. Tony Hall, Manag-
ing Director of BLCMP, then made the unexpected
announcement that they had actually developed the
software and it would be ready to be shipped to
libraries in the summer of 1993.
Consultation with suppliers
Over the next few months, we waited for beta
testing to be carried out, and talked to one of our
suppliers, Dawsons, about the level of support we
could expect from them. A major advantage for us
was that, as part of the BLCMP network, the
software was free of any extra charge, and we were
assured that Dawsons would absorb the transmis-
sion costs, which they are in fact doing.
We print our orders on two-part slips, one acting
as a paper copy of orders in our on-order file while
the top copy is sent to our supplier. This is re-
turned with the book and becomes a processing
slip for cataloguing, covering and spine-labelling,
which we do in-house. We were concerned that we
would still need the paper slip with each book, and
Dawsons readily agreed to supply one. We also
wanted a confirmation of each order sent, at least
to begin with, and again Dawsons were happy to
agree to send us a printout after each transmission.
We made the mental adjustment required to do
without the paper on-order file.
Transmitting orders
We experienced only minor delays in setting up
the system. We loaded the software, and BLCMP
provided us with the ANA (Article Numbering
Association) codes we needed to set up a trading
relationship between ourselves and our supplier.
Entering these into the supplier record was no
problem. Using BLCMP's example for setting up
the supplier profile was trickier. Following instruc-
tions,
we entered DAWSONS in the supplier name
field, and then puzzled over why the system would
not accept the name. Light dawned after a while —
a six character code is required to identify the
supplier. We dropped the last S, and the supplier
was accepted.
Then we discovered that we could not edit the
orders created to send them again. We tried this
twice, but each morning experienced the intense
disappointment of finding that our order had not
gone. Finally we cancelled the whole order and
recreated it, order by order. This did work, and we
were fortunate that BLCMP had advised us to send
a small test order to begin with. Normally we
would batch around 50 orders to send to a sup-
plier, so we were extremely relieved that our first
order had been a small one. This problem has
however been rectified and orders can now be
edited.
Actually sending the order is most unspectacular.
At the end of each order the screen message "order
sent for transmission" appears (Figure 1) and that's
all there is to it. There are no fanfares or flashing
lights,
just a routine message. The orders are held
until transmission overnight and appear at
Dawsons in the morning. Soon it will be possible
VlNE94
(March 1994)—19
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