Moving to a managed service is often considered a positive step especially in a small business where resources are tight and priorities difficult to manage. Migrating to a managed service potentially opens up a huge avenue of support and allows a business to offer services that compare to those offered by larger companies. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is one such area where managed services are especially useful for a Small/Medium Enterprise (SME).

Trying to run an in-house EDI service to offer a trading interchange service to a number of large customers and their varying demands for different exchange formats and transmission schedules is something that needs to be handled with care and attention. Often you may be met with a large EDI department and when you are on your own it can often seem a little like David and Goliath – especially as they often have little concern for your own internal issues.

The situation arose where we needed to employ a managed service for parts of our EDI solution, in particular to more effectively support  requirements for AS2 by a number of large customers. We used to simply have an IBM electronic mailbox where we would drop and pick up messages with trading partners but this got migrated to GXS which, to be fair, went fairly smoothly but since trying to implement managed services with GXS the majority of my time is now taken up, chasing non-existent updates, where it should have been freed up.

You would think that a company the size of GXS would take customer commitment and communication seriously and yet try as I might I just can’t seem to get any customer service out of the company. The number of phone calls and emails that have been made asking for updates only to receive very little response becomes quite frustrating after a while. Being met with the now almost laughable ‘I will call you back shortly’ message is starting to grate in such a way that I simply cannot put into words. During this time even my Account Manager has changed which has complicated matters even further.

I originally started an order enquiry in December last year and finally placed an order in January – tomorrow we go into May and I still have no idea of whether we will have a facility for one of our trading partners with this EDI managed service provided by GXS. Of course, the problems may be complex and there may be outside issues affecting the implementation but a simple update – either a phone call – or even easier – an email – is all that it takes to keep a customer happy and ‘in the loop’. It took until the middle of April for one of the managed service accounts to finally get up and running but there is still no news on the other account. I think that after four months an update is probably due but try as I might the communications simply do not get returned. The one only nugget of information I did get told were that things were starting to push ahead and I would get an update “as quickly as possible” and “hopefully by the end of the week” – mind you that was two weeks ago.

I have trawled GXS web site, where customer service and satisfaction seem paramount, but the one thing that seems to be missing is any real contact information of actual people to talk to. I have filled in the online form and unsurprisingly not received any reply. The sore point is that GXS own web site says that I can:

“Rely on GXS to implement AS2 on your behalf.”

Now I am stuck between a rock and a hard place; our in-house EDI service expired months ago and the managed service has no clear implementation date in sight. It isn’t like we can simply up and move our EDI service to another company either because this would require synchronisation with a huge number of EDI trading partners. I have tried one last attempt to resolve the situation and called my account manager to which I was assured ‘will call back in less than one hour with an update’. This was at 3:08pm on Monday – it is now 13:04pm on Wednesday.

So the question remains – what can you do when your managed service provider lets you down?