EDI Meets The Net

by Daniel Lyons
VAR Business
July 15, 1996

... Indeed, many EDI VARs are evolving and providing more sophisticated solutions, says Sigrid Marmann, president of Datatech EDI Systems, an EDI VAR in San Rafael, Calif. "The newest thing now for people is electronic payments, which augments a basic EDI system," Marmann says. "Everyone is saying that 1996 will be the year of electronic payments."

Electronic payment systems take EDI one step further by automating the process of disbursing funds to partners. Invoices are routed into the accounting system, and then, instead of generating a check to the supplier, the system generates an order to a bank that, in turn, makes an elecronic funds transfer to the supplier's account.

Datatech recently provided such a system for Xtra International Ltd., a $70 million shipping company in San Francisco that has hundreds of trading partners around the world. Datatech set up an electronic payment system to automate the process by which Xtra International pays its suppliers. "The system has saved us at least 10 to 15 hours a month," says John Costanza, assistant controller at Xtra International. "We spent about $10,000 on the project, and we'll recoup that within a year."

The trickiest part of setting up an electronic payment system is getting banks to cooperate, Marmann says. So far, Datatech has worked out agreements with a handful of banks in the United States and is working on prospects in Australia and Canada.

Marman says demand for EDI continues to expand. The Northern California EDI Users Group, which Marmann founded in 1991, now has 810 members, up from roughly 600 a year ago. ...

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