We're still early, you know, in the AI field with how it pertains to EDI. But, yeah, identifying patterns and the errors, you know, and speeding up mapping is definitely gonna be a that's definitely the words, you know, I just- Talk talk me through a practical example of how you're using it. I mean, are you you know, let's say you're developing a new integration, a new output. Are you actually validating that output, leveraging AI? Yep. Oh, yeah. Welcome back to Unraveling IT: Expert Tech Talks. I'm Peter Rodenhauser, President and CRO at Corsica Technologies. Today, we're talking about a piece of technology that quietly keeps mid market businesses running until it doesn't, electronic data interchange or EDI. Joining me is Jordan Verhulst, a data integration engineer here at Corsica with more than 15 years hands on experience helping organizations untangle and solve complex EDI environments. In this episode, we'll break down why EDI causes so much frustration for mid market companies, what's actually changing in the EDI landscape, and how organizations can modernize integration without any unnecessary complexity. Well, Jordan, how are you? Doing well. Doing well. Thank you. Good. Good. Jordan, you and I have have worked together on and off for a good number of years. I think over over 15 years now, if my math is correct. Does that sound about right? About right. Yep. Not a lot. So you you got, you know, you got into the data integration market about about fifteen years ago. You know, talk to me about that. What what what brought you in to the to the industry, and and what were your thoughts? Well well, I certainly guess I I certainly didn't go to school for this. I mean, I I didn't grow up thinking I'd I'd be in this industry. Just kinda fell into it. Got into the support side of things at the old Soft share corporation, so back in Santa Barbara. And I was just support for EDI, so that's where I started. You know, just very simple EDI issues that we would help troubleshoot. Nothing crazy, but then it just kinda naturally grew from there. And then here I am today. And that's where we met. That's where we met at at that time. And and if I'm not mistaken, you you also met your wife. So, EDI- you have a lot to be thankful for when it comes to EDI. Is that right? That's right. Thankfully. Yep. Thank you, EDI. So, you know, companies still struggle with this. Right? I mean, they've they've struggled with with EDI for for a long time. So why? Why is that? What what are they struggling with? From my experience, from what I've seen, a lot of it just kind of boils down to these environments that were built years ago, you know, just sometimes decades ago. Just been kind of patched and extended over time, and you end up with something that technically works, but, just kind of fragile. It's hard to manage, hard to change. And a lot of times, it ends up being very heavily dependent on just like a few people who really understand you know, what's going on. And, you know, that that combination really makes it tough for a growing company to to keep up. Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting. I I think we've probably both seen a lot of different flavors of of implementations through the years. And, you know, I I think for most enterprises, you know, they've gone with pretty traditional data integration platforms that are are very scalable. They have the resources to have, you know, really, really deep technical teams in terms of of knowledge and and skill set. But, you know, the mid market, that's that's not always the case. So what do you see with mid sized businesses when it comes to these implementations? You know, why are they saying, boy, EDI is is so painful for me? It's really less about just the the technology, really, and it's it's more about just the experience around it. From the outside, EDI looks simple. You know? It's just just like anything else, CSV, XML, what have you. It's all the same thing really, but, you know, you're just exchanging documents. You know? How could it be so difficult? But, I mean, in in reality, you know, every document, you know, has its own set of strict requirements. Every trading partner has their own way, you know, their own version of of those requirements. So when something breaks, it's you know, it can stop orders, shipments, invoices. It's just yeah. And then as far as, you know, the the the pain usually shows up kind of operationally, you know, orders don't go through, invoices get rejected, someone has to jump in manually. And then, you know, on top of that, you've got, you know, vendors, you know, vendor relationships, which, you know, that that changes, you know, takes long, you know, takes way too long, you know, for the or the cost. There's more more than expected. Like I said, kinda just builds frustrations. So, you know, something you said there, you said, you know, standards. Yeah. Standard base, but at the same time, you know, you said every, you know, every company does it differently. Yeah. It's contradictory. Right? And and we hear that a lot. Why why is that? Why is you know, if EDI is supposed to be a standard, why isn't it so different from one implementation of the next? That's the question I've been asking my entire career. I mean, if if if everyone followed the standard, we'd probably be out of the job. It'd be everything would be flowing perfectly. You know? It'd simple, but it's not. Yeah. I I think that's that's just a a harsh reality of of of what we say in the implementation. So, you know, the requirements have changed quite a lot, you know, through the years. And like, you know, maybe most specifically or more recently, I should say, with with the advent and and proliferation of API, you know, base base integration. Can can you talk a little bit about that? You know, what are you seeing in terms of, you know, some of these requirements changing over time? Sure. Sure. I know the yes. API used to be a little more static. You know, you'd you'd onboard a partner, you'd set it up, and it just kinda it wouldn't change much from there. But things are moving a lot faster now, you know, with partners updating requirements more often. Businesses add new channels, you know, like e commerce and these UPLs. There's just a lot more pressure to move data in real time. So those older approaches, they tend to break break down because they're you know, they weren't designed, you know, for that level of change, and they rely a lot on manual processes, custom maps. You know, those are always hard to update. Limited visibility is always that's kind of the crux. So I guess, you know, every change ends up becoming just an entire project instead of just, you know, a routine adjustment. Yep. Yep. I get it. You know, still staying on, you know, this this theme around mid size, mid market companies, you know, I I think they they feel maybe underserved and under underappreciated even from some of the traditional EDI, you know, providers. You know, why why do you feel that is? Why why do you feel see such a disparity in terms of these these enterprise organizations being more successful and having more robust implementations than than mid market organizations? I think a lot of the those traditional traditional providers are they're really optimized for, you know, kind of the you know, the very large, you know, enterprise you know, large enterprises or even, you know, just very standardized, high volume use cases. So mid market companies, they kind of fall somewhere in between. You know, they're they're growing. They're they're they've got these complexities. They don't necessarily have a big internal EDI team or unlimited budget like a lot of these enterprises end up having. So, you know, they do end up in a situation where they're, you know, they're either overpaying for something too rigid or stuck with solution that doesn't really scale well with their needs. You know, they they don't always get the level of support or flexibility that they that they actually need. Yeah. So, you know, I heard a couple of things there, Jordan. You know, these larger enterprises, they have the resources, you know, on staff to be able to handle the support and even implementations. Midsize organizations tend tend not to, and and it sounds like the providers aren't necessarily providing or or have the capacity to provide those those services either. Is is that right? So that's the void is is really that expertise or domain knowledge? Yes. That's that's that's what I see, you know, just in my experience. Definitely. Sure. Okay. Yeah. That, I mean, that makes sense from a professional managed service capacity standpoint. How about from technical implementations or technical challenges? What are you what are you seeing there across, you know, I'll I'll call it an enterprise organization versus a mid mid market organization? One of the bigger items is definitely the API integrations. Doesn't seem like a big leak, but it can be just technology wise, you know, like what you can support, what your back end system can support. So like I mentioned earlier, if you're running some older technology stack, it's it's gonna be a bear getting that integrated in to a system that actually, you know, supports the API side of things. Makes sense. Makes sense. So, you know, you've had the opportunity to work with a lot of different data integration platforms and and tool sets through the years. And, you know, you mentioned you you started at SoftShare. Of course, those that have been in the industry for a long time know the the Delta ECS products. I know you have a master's in in Delta and ECS. You, of course, spent some time at at Liaison working with powerful enterprise transformation tools like Contivo, and I'm sure there's been some others in there. What trends are you seeing in term if any, in terms of of those those technologies from, you know, what we what we're used to seeing 15, 20 years ago versus what we're seeing now? Bigger volume processing. I know a lot of these applications are are getting tuned for, you know, larger files, which kind of, you know, in the EDI world, large files in EDI, the word, you know, that those two don't go together, but I feel like I've seen larger EDI files lately. So just the the actual just load of processing to see it's just the the capability of chewing through large amounts of data, bigger files. That's definitely a a trend that I've seen. How about even, you know, higher transactional volume? You know, and I'm thinking maybe not necessarily EDI transactions, but more broader data integration. I have to imagine with these with all these applications exposing their APIs, there there have to be, you know, higher volume of transactions. Absolutely. No. Yeah. And, again, it's kinda goes into the what I mentioned earlier, just the more data just seems to be exponentially increasing. Everybody's Everybody's just crunching more and more data over time. So you see it everywhere, not even in, you know, just in our industry, just the the AI industry for one. Obviously, it's it's a big one, you know, to talk about data. It wouldn't be a podcast without, you know, talking about AI and what the impact is. You know, it's having on whatever the topic is. Of course, the topic here today is is data integration EDI. So so talk to me about the impacts AI is is having in terms of on the role of EDI engineers, EDI specialists, or even the the technology that's that's used to transform the data? You know, AI is is is really starting to help, you know, identify those those patterns, error patterns, making things easier to identify, like issues, errors that are, you know, bubbling up that you need to identify and address. It just it it really just helps, you know, make things a little more visually palatable. So I say we're still early, you know, in AI field with as far as how it pertains to EDI. But, yeah, identifying patterns and the errors, you know, and speeding up mapping is definitely gonna be a except for the words, you know, I Yeah. Talk talk me through a practical example of how you're using it. I mean, are you you know, when you're generating, you know, let's say you're you're you're developing a new integration, a new output, are you actually validating that output leveraging AI? Yep. Oh, yeah. So just we actually had a migration with one of our clients recently, Pretty major migration where you needed to essentially just diff. Right? Get the output from the legacy to the to the new environment. So we just use use AI for it, you know, say, hey. Look at these files. You know, this is, you know, legacy. This is new. What's the difference, if anything? You know? And then great thing about it is that it it goes beyond what you ask for a lot of times. You know? It's like, hey. I found these differences, and it'll them. Right? Like, these are the differences that don't matter. Right? It shouldn't you know, it won't matter internally or whatnot, but you might wanna focus on these. So it just it's the way that it kinda just visualizes this this data for you. It's just it's very powerful. That's those are all activities that, you know, historically are are pretty time consuming. So I'd imagine that has to be a pretty big efficiency gain. Yes. Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, Corsica's approach and the team and and approach here when it comes to managing these environments. From your seat, Jordan, what do you feel like we're doing that, you know, makes managing these environments more effective, more efficient, more responsive than than some of the alternatives out there? It's like a combination, really, our technology and our support. So not just about having a platform. It's more about how the platform is implemented and managed day to day. So, you know, you're having that team that understands both the technical and and the business impact of things, that that really helps make a difference. So our goal is essentially to, you know, simplify things for the client. We would reduce complexity, improve visibility, make those changes easier without them really needing to become the EDI expert themselves. So we're we're really providing that, you know, I'll I'll call it a a framework or the the people in the process part of the managed service to anticipate, respond, or or resolve any issues that that come up without a lot of engagement and effort from the end client. Exactly. And then also just coming up with those those questions that they wouldn't otherwise know to ask, you know. And are those questions are those, you know, are those technical questions? Are those questions related to the business? What's in our secret sauce to make it easier for for those customers? Right. Well, it it's like I mentioned before, it's really a combination of both technology and support. You know, it's our team having that that business know how and just knowing the pain points to look for, how to avoid them, what technology you might wanna implement into your stack to make things easier, and just having someone with the experience. You know, that's where it's at. So it really provides value to the client. Okay. Okay. Excellent. So just, you know, to wrap things up, you know, when when you think about, you know, put yourself in the seat of a CIO or or even, you know, CFO of a of a mid size business. You know, with a lot of the aging AI implementations out there today, you know, whether it's on premise or in some cases even, you know, hosted in in private clouds, what's the single most important thing that you feel they should really be focused on? Visibility. Say, one hundred percent. Before you try to actually replace, you know, or redesign anything, you need to have just a clear understanding of of what's happening in your current environment, you know, where things occur, how long it takes, you know, where the risks are. You know, once you have that that visibility, you know, it it becomes a lot easier to prioritize improvements and and make smarter decisions, you know, about modernizing your environment. Do you feel is it always possible to layer the visibility on top of an aging platform, or might it might it require a technology refresh? Well, I think having that visibility kinda helps you determine, you know, whether or not you need that entire technology refresh. Right? Based on that visibility, if you can assess, we need to just get this whole our whole technology stack and implement something new. That visibility will make that decision a lot easier and just more justifiable. For sure. For sure. Okay. Excellent. Alright. Well, Jordan, thanks so much for your your time today. I really appreciate you spending a little bit of of your time. I know I know you're a busy guy, so this was this was really helpful, very insightful based on on your background and and what you're what you're seeing day in and day out. Thanks for having me. Thanks again to Jordan for joining me today. EDI may not be the most visible part of the tech stack, but when it's done right, creates a real operational advantage. And when it's done wrong, it slows everything down. So for our listeners, we'll include resources in the show notes if you're looking to modernize EDI or simplify your integration environment. I'm Peter Rodenhauser, and this has been Unraveling IT: Expert Tech Talks. We'll see you next time.
