Radley
See also Radley Contract
Radley Corporation is a supply-chain provider specializing in workforce automation products like WMS and EDI[1] At WNA Radley was chosen as our EDI Provider in 2008 as part of the IFS Upgrade project.
EDI Solution
Introduction:
The EDI translator WNA used in 2008 to generate and receive EDI messages did not work in IFS App 7 of the software and a new EDI translator is necessary to take advantage of the enhance communication interfaces between IFS and 3rd party packages. Therefore as part of the IFS App 7 upgrade a new EDI package was required.
Scope
The objective was to identify at least two applications that had been successfully interfaced with IFS 2004 or above and were recommended by IFS. Two applications met these criteria. One was Gentran by Sterling Commerce and the other was iREDI by Radley Corporation.
In the RFQ’s the vendors were asked to quote for the cost of the application, the cost of recreating the EDI maps with WNA’s customers, licensing fees, VAN costs (Value Added Networks) and implementation costs. In addition they were asked to provided annual maintenance, upgrade and support costs. In addition they were asked to provide alternative monthly lease and or hosted service costs.
Analysis of solution providers and costs
Radley was the preferred solution provider and partner of IFS. Radley utilizes many of the built-in integration features in IFS such as the Extended Server. The advantage of this partnership is that, as a customer, WNA avoids the risk of obsolescence as Radley commit to maintaining the product in line with upgrades in IFS without the costs of reimplementation. However, this translates into higher annual maintenance costs.
Sterling Commerce is also a highly regarded solution for EDI but they are not a solution partner with IFS. Therefore there was no guarantee that WNA will not be faced with additional hardware and re-implementation costs with future IFS upgrades. The two solution providers take different approaches to how the product is deployed. Radley’s approach is to be a full-service solution provider. This means that they will support the user completely and resolve all issues relating to the operation of the application and provide first line support for the VANs (Wal-Mart, Target, AS2 etc. They will also maintain changes to EDI maps as part of the maintenance fee. Sterling Commerce’s approach is to provide the application and training to resolve these issues internally. For instance they will provide training in the application and show WNA how to modify and create maps but do not readily provide the support for the product as part of the maintenance but will charge a consulting fee instead.
The Radley approach means that WNA does not need a dedicated EDI resource to maintain the application other than to monitor the messages but it does mean that WNA relies on the competence and timeliness of Radley’s support. The Sterling Commerce approach requires dedicating an IT resource to learn, monitor and maintain the application but WNA. It is difficult to estimate how much time an internal resource would dedicate to EDI in such a scenario but in a stable post-implementation phase it could be 10 to 15 hours a week.The Radley solution is comparatively more expensive than Sterling Commerce mainly because it provides functionality that Sterling Commerce does not possess and would have to be created in some other fashion at a cost. References References were taken up with Radley but no suitable References were identified for Sterling. The Radley references were very positive and noted Radley’s speedy issue resolution. The reference sites had IFS install bases of up to 350 IFS users. They had multiple sites and used many of the same VAN’s and EDI messages that WNA does. Consequently we can feel comfortable that the Radley product can meets WNA’s EDI requirements. Implementation timetable
Radley provided a high level implementation plan that estimated a start date of February 1st 2008. Under such a scenario the implementation would be completed by the end of April 2008 and would be within the timetable provided by IFS for the completion of the customizations. Therefore this project would be completed by the time WNA is ready to Go Live of IFS App7 Sterling Commerce did not provide a timeline and an implementation completion date would be subject to how much internal resources are dedicated to the set up of the application.
Recommendation
Radley’s iRedi wass the preferred application to interface EDI with IFS • Application costs are higher but the product has more functionality and it’s guarantee that its product will remain in-step with enhancements with IFS should protect against larger periodic upgrade costs in the future • Radley’s provides a total solution that includes the application, interface, existing mapping, support and enhancement of existing mapping, which reduces the reliance on WNA internal support and expertise. • Radley has provided good references who can vouch for the robustness of application and solid support • The Radley solution can be implemented alongside the upgrade of App7 and will not prolong the upgrade process.
Synergy Licenses
The number of licenses installed should not be a factor in performance now that WNA has the new iSheduler. With the old iScheduler, more runtime licenses were required (2 per job). The new iScheduler uses one license per scheduled job (WNA have approximately 5), and one license is used for every directory being watched by the file handler. Even if there were 12 scheduled jobs, you would probably still have a sufficient number of licenses. If this becomes an issue , Radley can check into installing 2 widgets in the Business Activity Monitor that show the number of Synergy licenses in use.
Operation of Radley Software
- BAM - GUI monitoring service
- itivity VPN access to Server
- Radley originally started on SQL server database but was moved to Pervasive in 2012
References
Customer Support:http://customerportal.radley.com/login. Requires login and password Timeline::2008
