With all due respect to Right Said Fred, I’ll take a bit of their song and use it…

But, let’s face it - EDI isn’t sexy. It’s not glamorous… We’re not going to get many invites to black-tie-and-beaded-gown-red-carpet-fancy events. There are no EDI “Oscars” or “Emmys” or “Tony Awards” or anything like that. There’s just data. And details. Lots and lots of details.

And they do say that “the devil is in the details”…

And do I know a thing or two about details! I’ve often been told that I sometimes put in TOO much detail. When I was taking some creative writing courses in college, one teacher was always fascinated and enthralled by the amount of details I’d provide in a story and another always warned Me about too much detail - to let the reader create the image in their mind, of their experiences. If you’ve read much of My work on EDI Talk (or My latest blog over at Inovis), you’ll know I do tend to go into some details - and, yes, sometimes get a bit off track with them…

Now, where were we…?

OH! Yes. Details. And not the men’s fashion magazine!

Truly, however, it is just those details and our attention to them that can make or break our EDI career. How well we provide those details to our trading partners in our outbound documents and how concise we can make our EDI Document specs, the better documents we can receive from our trading partners in return.

In a lot of ways - whether related to our work, our homes, our personal relationships, our cars, whatever - if we do not pay attention to the details, we can lose track of something that can - and usually and probably will - create havoc a bit later on. Take the driver on their cell phone… They’re so into that conversation, that they seem to neglect the details involved in driving… So they don’t stay in their lane; they run that red light or stop sign; they sideswipe some car on the road or cause some other kind of accident.

True, it doesn’t happen all the time. But the opportunity is there for disaster. That recipe has at least an ingredient or two and just needs a few more to be complete.

The daily newspaper and the evening news always have stories of issues or disasters or problems - and oft times you can see that if somebody had just paid attention to a detail or two, the situation may never have gotten out of control. Remember the bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007? How about the plane exploding just after take-off in Madrid in 2008? These disasters - and may others - may have been prevented if somebody had just paid attention to the details.

Years ago, I was taking a Carribbean Cruise. 10 wonderful days aboard the SS Rotterdaam, in the Holland America fleet. I was living in Northern California at the time and had to fly to Fort Lauderdale to meet the cruise. And, of course, the travel agent couldn’t seem to find space on a non-stop flight and so I had to swap planes in Dallas-Fort Worth. At the time, DFW Airport had 2 sets of runways - one for all Eastbound flights and one for all Westbound flights.

So, here I am, all snug in My 727 as it’s zooming down the runway and beginning to lift off. Now, if you’ve ever flown on a 727, it’s an experience, as they tend to build up all of their speed on the ground and - seemingly - LEAP into the air, with a quick and very angled climb. Only then, after they’re so many feet into the air, do they begin to level off. Back to My flight, the nose was lifting and you knew it was just a second or two before the back wheels would lift and we’d be in the air…

Just a milli-second before the rear wheels left the ground, a warning light flashed on the dash and the pilot put us back down, stopped us and turned us around and headed back towards the terminal. He told us, as we were heading back, about the light and how he wanted to get it checked out so to be sure it was nothing.

An hour later, we all find out that the bulb socket is what caused the problem and it wasn’t related to the systems it covered. Never did know what system it covered… But a new socket was installed and the light bulb replaced.

Of course, now that we’re an hour later, there’s a stormfront moving in from the west and the Eastbound runway is backed-up with other planes on their way out. Luckily, our pilot talked to a tower controller and got permission to fly out Westbound - where there was far less traffic - and turn around and head east. We were up and flying again in minutes, rather than sitting on the tarmac, waiting in line to take off.

That pilot was paying attention to the details. Because of his attention to details, we were only marginally late in arriving in Florida, but we also all arrived safe and sound. Never knew if the warning lamp COULD have been a big issue and could have resulted in a disaster. But because of a detail oriented pilot, disaster was averted.

Hmmm… where was I…? RIGHT! DETAILS…! DISASTER…! Aversion therapy…

WHAT?

But truly, it’s those details that keep us going. By getting the right information to our vendors and suppliers and customers, we can avert disaster. Or, in the very least, we can avert some problems and issues that could arise later on.

One of the things I’ve always mentioned - in blogs and comments here and on other sites - is how wonderful EDI is at helping to curb errors and mistakes. You don’t get keying errors from an AP clerk or a Customer Service clerk that types in the wrong information and your order for 100 widgets becomes 1000 widgets. Or the invoice for $568.00 becomes 5680…  You miss the errors where somebody wasn’t paying attention to the details and “Oops!” - an error happens.  Hopefully somebody catches that error, but…

And what about the details of our translation specs..?  They matter a lot too.  It makes much more sense if we put an “order quantity” (from the PO1 segment of an X12-850 Purchase Order) into the correct field in our ERP, rather than just put it any ol’ place.  It matters that we pull the total dollar value of the invoice - the amount we’re looking to get paid for the productds or services we’ve rendered - from our accounting application and put that in the TDS segment of the Invoice (or similar, based upon the standard you’re using!) so that when the customer gets the invoice, they pay us the right amount.

Those details matter. Those details can be the difference between “No problemo!” (Terminator 3) and “Houston, we’ve got a problem!” (Apollo 13). 

Those details make it so we have the right information in our systems and can do the right thing with that information; from filling an order to creating that order; paying an invoice to setting up items to be ordered to be put on that invoice.  Details are truly important cogs on the gear wheels we use in every day life.

Details are not sexy. 

Details are plain, dull and ordinary. 

But details matter; details get the job done.