In a VAN down by the river… January 10, 2008
Posted by Matt Pritchett in Inovis Solutions.Tags: migration process, Value Added Network, VAN
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Matthew Pritchett, Manager of Implementations at Inovis, is the newest member of our blogging team. Matthew recently sent me his first blog post on VAN Migration. Enjoy!
So, now that I have your attention with this great Chris Farley line, I would like to talk about what happens when you want to live in a VAN down by the lake instead, a.k.a migrating VAN’s (Value Added Networks that is).
When the topic comes up about migrating to a new VAN, typically comments like “I have to setup a new connection?!? That means working with IT, firewall, 3rd party outsourced teams, etc and this will take a lot of work, time, and effort!” to “What about my data? Will it get lost? What’s the migration process? What do I have to do?” Below, I have tried to address many of the steps required in the migration process and some helpful hints to make your migration easier, faster, and less risky. Inovis has migrated many customers and we’ve been migrating customers for a really long time; so we’ve gotten pretty good at it. The great part about a migration is that it’s a team effort. The VAN and your company representative will work together every step of the way (at least that’s the way Inovis does it).
If you are considering migrating VAN’s, here are some questions to ask as well as a list of preliminary items to work on:
- What does my IT team think? Work with your IT team to understand what type connectivity they support and prefer.
- Who do I trade with? Identify your trading partners’ EDI ID/Qualifiers, VAN provider(s), contact information, etc. The more information you have, the better. I’ll explain why in a moment.
- Do I have any type special setups on my current VAN like blocking of data, carbon copies of data to a 3rd party, etc?
Migration process…
- Connectivity…
o Decide how
o Get it set up
o Test the connection and data formats
- Address special processing (optional depending on requirements)
- Notify trading partners and their VAN’s – this is where the trading partner contact information comes into play (Inovis completes this on the customer’s behalf)
- Go-Live
o Update your VAN connection to the new VAN.
o Confirm all changes at the VAN/TP levels.
- Monitoring
Again, the great part about the migration process is that the new setup is tried and true. At the point when you are comfortable with testing, the VAN schedules the migration of data with other VAN’s and partners, all the while keeping the customer informed and abreast of go-live. The key is to Think, Decide, and then Act—and doing all 3 with Inovis implementations and client representatives means success.
In an effort for you to help me, help you—and any other customers that are migrating—I’m curious…
What are your experiences with VAN migrations?
What’s the biggest pain point around VAN migrations?
If there were issues, what were they and how were they resolved?
What type helpful hints do you have for other customers that are planning or in the process of migrating?
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Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! A comment space that I REALLY know something about!!!!
I’ve been using Inovis for ALL of My EDI “life”…. We were on Harbinger (now part of Inovis) Trusted Link 2.11 for a long time and we used the IBM Advantis network that we purchased through QRS (now part of Inovis)… I’ve been dealing with folks from QRS since My beginning in EDI about 4 years ago… Wow… Has it been that long…?
When QRS became a part of Inovis, so did we. When the “resell” of the IBM Advantis network was going to move away from Inovis and be taken over by … GEIS? … we were faced with the option of migration… but we had no choice… we either had to migrate from the IBM Advantis through QRS/Inovis to IBM Advantis through GEIS (or whomever!) or we had to migrate to another network….
We chose to stay with Inovis and moved to the InovisWorks platform.
And nothing worked better….
The Migration Team from Inovis made it very simple and easy – taking care of every aspect of the migration – from notifications to all trading partners and VANS/Networks to walking us through any changes that we needed to make on our local systems and in TrustedLink i-Series (our translator product – now at V 6.1.4)… Ella and Raul and Sue and Lisa and…. well, the entire Inovis crew…. made our transition super simple….
We were able to keep visibility into our “old” mailbox on the IBM network for a year and I would get reports whenever a vendor sent something to the “old” mailbox and I could contact them and remind them of the change…. We had very minimal issues with vendors “missing” that migration, but there were a few – maybe a dozen? And if they didn’t respond to My gentle nudges – “you do know we migrated networks/VANS, right?” – then I could also involve Inovis and they’d be able to help out with contacting both the vendor AND the network that they used….
Inovis was there through every step to make sure we were happy and set up properly with all our needs and the migration was pretty simple and easy… certainly not the hair-pulling, heart-pounding experience that so many migrations can be…..
I still get calls – weekly – monthly – from this network or that VAN – saying that they can save Me “a lot of money” by switching from Inovis to brand X (or Y or Z or G or I or L or T or….)…. And what so many don’t seem to understand is that COST is not the only factor to consider…. You need to consider so many other factors – such as up time/down time, errors or problems in the transmissions, and so forth – but another thing, as well… If you’re already using Inovis products and software and systems, why would you want to branch out to another product that may, even though it still “works” right with your existing systems, that may cause an issue down the road….
If I have an issue with a document, I can put in a service request and I know that since I’ve got Inovis all over, I’m not going to have Inovis tell Me that maybe it’s with My “brand X” network…. or have brand X tell Me it’s an issue with My application…. There’s no “it’s their fault” finger pointing…
By the way – if I seem like an “Inovis Cheerleader” – it’s because I am… I’m exceptionally happy with the services and abilities from Inovis and will continue to be….
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