In general, any change that moves any section of this industry closer to the goal of using computers to reduce (rather than alter) workload should be supported. If only the distributors agreed…
But on to the topic…
We are definitely interested, but the specifics of what people have in mind would need to fleshed out.
For now, Phil, I will assumme you are referring to utilising just the devliery information that is available as EDI. If you have more in mind then the following is less applicable.
The main objection would be having to pay nearly $400 per year for XchangeIT.
I’ve read the specs for the EDI file formats and the documentation for XchangeIT that they have on their website (just a large FAQ, not the full manual). If anyone has access to the complete docs for XchangeIT (apparently a word document) could they let me know. They might answer more of my questions.
Based on what I have read so far and making some assumptions about the most likely way for them to implement their EDI system, it seems reasonably likely that all XchangeIT does is FTP some files from a computer on each distributors network.
If that is all a software package is doing for you, it doesn’t deserve to have any price other than free.
The best thing to do would be to not bother with XchangeIT and fetch the info directly from the distributors.
My suspicion is that the authors of XchangeIT may have exclusive rights to create software to do this. Further, I wonder if XchangeIT is perhaps owned by some or all of the distributors or publishers, which would make them less inclined to allow competition.
Does anyone know any of the story of why agents are appently forced to pay for information that is required if the entire industry is to ever utilise technology to increase productivity and profits and decrease waste and mistakes?
I could continue this rant, but Network have failed to tell us what mags are arriving tonight (Again), so it’s time to waste time tracking that down again.