System crashes are costly and embarrassing! Don’t find yourself in a panicked situation when there are steps you can take to avoid catastrophe. You need to protect yourself whether EDI is on your server or in the cloud. Costly loss of productivity can be minimized in the event of a system crash by creating a disaster recovery plan now.
The vulnerability of B2B document exchange lies in the many hand-offs between the EDI system and the business application, which are undisciplined and error prone in many cases. The successful hand-off between data transmission, EDI, and business applications depends upon:
- Receipts for messages – MDN’s and 997’s must be received and if not accepted, notifications should be forwarded.
- Control numbers – checking sequence and duplicates can prevent errors early in the process.
- Proper alerts, which repeat until repaired – For example, the message “P.O. 98237 from partner Acme cannot be processed due to a missing item number. Contact partner to resend P.O.” is important and must be re-sent until repaired.
- Severe errors alerts sent to supervisors.
- Managers knowing the scripts used. Each should be listed and described (including their paths). Additionally, remarks are time savers for the person who comes after.
Part of the solution is straightforward, but not trivial: documentation. This addresses the hand-offs that must be set between systems. Most managers specify the systems and locations needing to be restored. When the hand-offs are not known, the time needed to learn of and reset the paths is too much when key customers’ document exchange is at stake.
Other steps you must consider:
- Recovery Plan – written, taught, and rehearsed (more on this to come)
- Confirmations – care must be taken to set MDN confirmations
- Prioritization – restore customer Purchase Orders and Shipment Notices first
- Anticipate – Automate back-ups and archive EDI data in case of disaster recovery
- Documentation – data flow schema
DCS has helped hundreds of companies plan for the worst in order to avoid it. With our GROW™ Service, we can provide assistance in creating a Recovery Plan, putting said plan in effect, and training your employees for emergencies.
What horror stories can you tell us? (Humor is OK.)
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