Liaison Technologies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a US-based chain of department stores. I work on the business side of IT for the company. Unlike the retail section of our company, our group was the first one to sell externally to outside retailers. As such, our profile and needs are different to those of the main business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Liaison Technologies?

We needed EDI [Electronic Data Interchange] support for all of our trading partners. The EDI department in our company was only familiar with the supplier side and had no experience in acceding to customer requirements. My business needed to have a hands-off EDI support. We have a lean operation, with no assigned IT or EDI experts. All resources are shared with the corporate division. Customers needed to be on-boarded quickly, but we were taking 6-8 weeks for the process at the time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We essentially started the work from scratch. Liaison Technologies assigned a project manager who worked with our business, figuring out what we needed to do and how we needed to do it. The main challenge was to achieve a hands-off approach to EDI connectivity.

How did you come to work with Liaison Technologies?

Our group has been using 4 different EDI providers for trading partners, transportation, transactions and international shipments. We started off with 5 potential suppliers, vetted them to 3, put out a bid, got quotes, and had them provide on-site demonstrations of how they would work exactly. Liaison Technologies won for several reasons.

How much have you invested with Liaison Technologies?

The cost of Liaison Technologies' services has averaged at around $8,500 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with Liaison Technologies for around one and a half years. We're currently using Liaison Technologies for managed services. Anytime we have a new trading partner or need to make a change in specifications, Liaison Technologies will handle it for us. I can send them an email specifying what needs to be done, and Liaison Technologies moves it to production after approval.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Since we've been using Liaison Technologies, they've committed in the contract to on-board a supplier in 10 business days, and a customer in 15. For suppliers, we've averaged an onboarding process of 5 business days, as long as they cooperated. For customers, we can do it in 10 business days. Liaison Technologies shaved 5 business days off of each commitment, and this has made company operations, as well as my life, much easier. Aside from shaving time off, it freed our group from having to bring in an FTE [full-time equivalent] to concentrate on the EDI.

One of the biggest impacts to our business came through a reporting tool called the Liaison Data Visualization Module, which gives us access to EDI transactions. It's very user-friendly, and has enabled our operations and inventory staff to retrieve information about sent orders, received invoices, and so on. It enables non-IT and non-EDI people to go in and do their own research. We haven't had to hire someone for this process, and didn't have to wait for excessive periods of time whenever something needed changing. The enablement of the frontline people to do their own research has helped tremendously.

I had a general discussion with my vice president yesterday. He made the comment that nothing that I'm doing in terms of EDI has risen up to his desk, which is a good thing. He knows the name Liaison Technologies but isn't intimately familiar with them, so they're doing well for us.

How did Liaison Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Liaison Technologies' project manager was very hands-on, stepped in when needed, and even prodded my external business help, getting them to respond quickly. This made it very easy for me to get the job done.

What did you find most impressive about Liaison Technologies?

The initial project timeline was set to around 6 months by Liaison Technologies, but we finished 2 weeks ahead of schedule and on budget. I've been working in this field for a long time and find it very unusual for a project of this kind to finish in this manner.

Are there any areas Liaison Technologies could improve?

When we first started, Liaison Technologies didn't have a set method of communicating work in process. It only took a couple of weeks for myself and my contact at Liaison Technologies to come into a cadence of receiving status reports on a weekly basis. Liaison Technologies should have set this up during the implementation process, but it has worked well for us. I can call my contact for any questions. We have weekly hours set with Liaison Technologies for EDI changes, and I can use the reports in order to gauge if we're approaching our maximum. In these cases, I can ask Liaison Technologies to put a hold on lower-priority tasks, and thus balance our budget.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Liaison Technologies?

I advise clients to trust Liaison Technologies. They know what they're doing. Initially, there can be a lack of trust in the partner doing work on a company's systems, because of how unique they may be. Liaison Technologies understood our business right off the bat, from the first few weeks of reviewing our project plan.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a food products manufacturer and distributor. I am the Business Solutions Architect. I act as a liaison between our business units and the IT department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Liaison Technologies?

My core job is to analyze the business process and recommend solutions that benefit the company. Our internal EDI [electronic data interchange] had been in place for over 20 years, and we knew that we lacked backup personnel in case our primary support people became unavailable. There was also a need for getting new trading partners setup; our backlog reached over 140 partners at one point. This was the second driving factor for moving to Liaison Technologies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We offloaded our entire setup to Liaison Technologies. The part left for us simply included verifying elements on the backend of the solution. Instead of a traditional ERP [enterprise resourcing planning], we have a hodgepodge of tools, so there is still an amount of work which needs to be done on our end for partner setup. For the most part, Liaison Technologies is handling all of our setups and providing troubleshooting. Contacting trading partners that need to be setup is a big load off of our shoulders. Many of them can be unresponsive, and we don't have the time to sit on the phone trying to get a hold of someone. There is a backlog of projects and a million other things that we need to work on.

How did you come to work with Liaison Technologies?

We evaluated a number of EDI [electronic data interchange] service providers. The one thing that set Liaison Technologies apart was their LENS tool. None of the other companies we looked at had anything close to that. We also went through an RFP [request for proposal] process with everyone else. Liaison Technologies' price was well below the nearest competitor's.

How much have you invested with Liaison Technologies?

The total cost of Liaison Technologies' services has been between $500,000 and $1,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Liaison Technologies in January 2015. The phase-one implementation, which included getting our trading partners up-to-date, was completed at the end of June 2016. We are now in phase 2, which entails Liaison Technologies helping us tackle our project queue. We are halfway done at this point.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Initially, there was no documentation in place, and we'd done a lot of customization for every partner. Liaison Technologies helped us get to a more standard model across the board. Even though people think that EDI is a standard process, it's really not. There is a lot of customization that goes into it, and we were able to get rid of some of it with Liaison Technologies' help. 

We had around 40 projects for EDI 820 setups. Due to a process change recommended by Liaison Technologies, we no longer had to set those up. We were able to knock 40 projects off the queue in the span of a day.

We have decided to purchase their Liaison Athena solution in order to onboard our transportation and logistics carriers. Planning a futuristic look, we plan to use this solution in order to onboard all of the co-packers used in our production. The ultimate goal is to become fully electronic, and we wouldn't have been able to do this without Liaison Technologies' help.

How did Liaison Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager from Liaison Technologies did a very good job and was generally knowledgeable, so much so that we've requested to keep him on additionally.

What did you find most impressive about Liaison Technologies?

Having access to the LENS tool was a game changer for us. Our accounts payable or any other department in our business who wants access to EDI transactions or documents can do so without us having to dig through documents. We can simply set them up with an account, and because the information comes in a human-readable format, they don't have to worry about understanding the transactions and can simply look at an invoice as if it came in the mail. We've had savings around support labor.

Liaison Technologies has been able to support us within any issue that we've had. This has had a lot to do with our project manager pushing things for us.

Are there any areas Liaison Technologies could improve?

Because we didn't understand our environment after adding trading partners for a long time and not documenting the process, we gave Liaison Technologies the wrong number after getting a trading partner setup. As we dug into the project, we came to find out that the timeline was bigger than we initially said. Liaison Technologies had to pull in resources in order to help us meet deadlines.

At the same time, they were building maps for our company and were supposed to be testing them on their end, but some of that testing was missed. Nothing went to production, but we had to do some extra work after Liaison Technologies failed to make the tests. We called them out on it; Liaison Technologies accepted it, went back to the drawing boards, got additional resources, and fixed the problem. It hasn't happened again, and it's all in the past. There have been other little things here and there, but they were all typical project issues.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Liaison Technologies?

Clients need to make sure that they get their internal numbers correct before sending specs to Liaison Technologies. Quotes will be made on this, and if the client provides wrong information, Liaison Technologies can't be held accountable. We only have around 300+ trading partners, so we're not a huge partner by EDI standards, but still messed a number up.

Also, people should make sure that they, as a client, are driving the project instead of the supplier.