Flexible EDI Solutions for the SMB Market

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Flexible EDI Solutions for the SMB
Market
Featuring valued customer

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Behind the Firewall - Look Familiar?

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After a While, it Starts to Look Like This:

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The “Trap”
• Multiple products and processes; some overlap, some
are siloed
• Tools are complex and cannot fit more than one task
• Knowledge gaps
• Over time, companies can become rigid and brittle.
• Data synchronization headaches
• ROI goes…..

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Integration Solution Offerings –
ECS and Delta
• Delta is an any-to-any mapping and data translation
tool.
• ECS is a communication server supporting a wide
variety of data transfer protocols and standards.
• Delta and ECS combined provide an enterprise
application integration (EAI) solution capable of
coordinating the many diverse applications, databases
and e-commerce formats found across the enterprise.
• Delta and ECS combined provide a business to
business (B2B) solution capable of coordinating all
trading partner requirements as an extension of the
enterprise.

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ECS and Delta

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ECS and Delta
Even the “non-traditional” project can find a home.

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Value Proposition
• Scalable
– The platform is powerful as a standalone server or may be
scaled out across multiple servers for load balancing and
failover.
• Sophisticated
– Delta & ECS together create a flexible integration platform to
meet typical B2B requirements and complex Enterprise
Application Integration needs.
• Simplistic
– Originally built for the SMB market, the configuration interface
and development environment is intuitive and does not require
engineer level expertise for development and support.
(read: no programming required)

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Translates to…
• Maximizing ROI by:
– Reducing the number of software tools needed
– Allowing common tools to be used for uncommon
implementations
– Lowering the “IQ” required to succeed where:
• IQ = Implementation Quotient

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Common Midsize Supplier Solution
• Typical need
‒ Onsite software for integration with mid to high level ERP
package
‒ Technical components may be developed and maintained by
Liaison, channel partner community or client
• Most customers can be served by a single server
solution
‒ Delta Engine, Delta Studio, and ECS Standard
‒ Additional servers can be added for disaster recovery or
test/development systems

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High Volume, Complex Clients
• Typical need
‒ Need load balancing for high volume of transactions
‒ Looking for live fail-over server capabilities
‒ Looking for segmented dev/test/production environments
‒ Need to support multiple map developers with version control,
map check-in/out and roll forward/back
• Complex client needs can be served by multi-server
systems
‒ Delta Engines, Delta Enterprise Studio(s)
‒ ECS Enterprise provides for hot-hot support

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Differentiation by Versatility and Flexibility
• Can be used to solve common B2B, EAI, A2A needs
• Migration projects
• Eliminate the cost of maintaining many disparate
applications, overcoming silos
• Data translation and integration in unexpected places
• When you empower the tools, they can empower you,
save time, money, errors.
• Liaison examples:
– JIRA migration
– Athena
– Company-wide reporting...

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JIRA Migration
• JIRA provides issue tracking and project tracking for
software development teams to improve code quality
and the speed of development
• Some of Liaison development teams using homegrown
defect tracking system. Inherited by way of acquisition
• Delta used to migrate from homegrown system to JIRA
in less than 30 days
• Project was completed by an intern with no prior Delta
mapping experience.
• Solution involved mapping from SQL Server database
to a JIRA supported XML-based scripting language
called “Jelly”

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Liaison Athena
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A Case Study for Integration
Success
Andrew Yarnall

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• Leading generic prescription pharmaceutical distributor based in
Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Celebrating our 15th year anniversary in 2011
• Providing value and customer satisfaction, KMI has achieved the
Inc. 500 and Inc 5000 list for the past three years.
• VAWD (Verified-Accredited Wholesale Distributors)
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About Keysource Medical

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Liaison ECS and Delta at Keysource Medical
• Typical install to start – Delta Studio, Delta Engine,
ECS
• 80+ “standard” EDI partners
• Vendor facing and customer facing
• Added 2nd ECS node in late 2010 for disaster recovery
and load balancing
• 1K-2K batches of data per day
• Primary integration with MAS 200 SQL
• SWK’s MAPADOC is used as “middleware” for creating
sales orders in ERP system
• EDI duties take 5-10% of weekly workload of one
person
• AS2, VAN and FTP traffic handled by ECS

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•Our customers were asking for EDI, but we also recognized a
need for other functionality and integrations. We wanted one
central platform to handle all scenarios.
•After implementing the first customer, we found that we could
create mappings very rapidly that provided the same type of
logging and reporting as EDI and found other unique uses for the
tools. Using the Studio, we were able to create integrations rapidly,
with no code to support and enjoy all the exception reporting of the
“standard” integrations.
18
Keysource Medical – General Problem Statement

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Warehouse temperature management - how can we monitor our
warehouse temperature/humidity, log the results, keep history and
notify management of a potential issue?
We have a process that queries 4 temperature sensors in our
warehouse, checking for both temperature and humidity. A file is
written to the network for each data value.
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Pain Point/Solution #1 – Warehouse Management

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• ECS picks up that data file on a fixed schedule (every 2 minutes)
and logs the file.
• Delta translates the data and writes the value, filename, reading
type and time to a SQL Server database
• If the reading is outside our set parameters an exception is fired
off and management is notified via email.
• History is kept for 6 months in that table.
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Pain Point/Solution #1 – Warehouse Management

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How can we improve our interaction with our parcel carriers and
“rate shop” effectively? We have all these disparate systems for
each carrier!
• Can we design something inside the ERP system where order
entry takes place?
• Can we save any time?
• Can it be done “yesterday”?
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Pain Point/Solution #2 – Shipping Rates

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• Send sales order number and ship via code to ECS via HTTP.
• ECS invokes a “process map” that takes Ship Via and Sales
Order Number as input and based on code (UPS, FEDEX) calls a
web service map. This map queries the carrier and returns a dollar
figure. The dollar figure is then sent back to the originating request
(synchronously).
• Uses powerful WebServiceRequest function in Delta to make the
Web Service to the carrier
22

@LiaisonTech 23

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• We have to monitor our customers to make sure they are licensed
by the DEA to buy controlled substances. The DEA keeps a list of
1.3 million licensed dispensers, which we download weekly.
• How can we validate our customer records against our DEA
database “on the fly”? How can we automatically maintain our
database as well?
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Pain Point/Solution #3 – Customer Compliance

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When a customer record is changed, a web service call is made to
ECS, where the customer data is checked against that database.
If the customer is not in the database, or has an expired license, it
will not let the customer record be changed. That customer will not
be allowed to order controlled substances from us.
25

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Maps were created to run on a schedule to maintain the customer
master in the ERP system.
Each customer gets checked daily for:
• Valid DEA Registration #
• DEA License Expiration
• DEA “Schedule”
26

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Depending on the results of the validation the maps do the following:
• Send a text report via email to the compliance department.
• Updates the customer record to make them compliant with our
ordering system
• Turns off that customers ability to order certain product from us.
27

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Our sales people don’t really understand EDI. How can we make it
user-friendly for them and give them visibility to their EDI orders,
without giving them unnecessary tools? How can we show the
details of their order easily?
Orders go through a series of checks before we accept any items.
These include: minimum order amount, daily item limits, monthly
item limits, out of stock check, refrigerated items, etc.
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Pain Point/Solution #4 - Ordering

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HTML to the rescue!
During order process, a control map is used to fire off different
maps and process - all of the logic necessary to validate an order.
Since HTML allows better control over the presentation layer, we
use it to show the information to the rep in an automated, user-
friendly method.
This is done via EDI -> text mapping, where HTML is the target.
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@LiaisonTech 30

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Why Delta / ECS for these projects?
• Standardized data – simple to model
• Maps are stored in Solution Manager for version control
• RAD – rapid application development
• “No code” solutions
• Automated logging / audit trail / exception reporting
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In Summary

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Solutions
• Data Integration
• Data Management
• Data Security
Multinational
• Global headquarters in Atlanta
• European offices in Finland,
Netherlands, Sweden, UK
• More than 7000 customers
worldwide in over 46 countries
Visit KeySource
Medical here
For more
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