THE PROBLEM
Why Hasn't the Problem Been Fixed?
Trying to understand why the enrollment process has not been fixed is complicated. There seem to be many reasons including:
- It’s a paper process and therefore is perceived to be unable to be fixed.
- It’s a one-time event so has not merited the time and expense involved.
- It is secondary to our primary function (which is to process the EDI transactions) so few resources are put on it.
One of the primary reasons, however, seems to be that even though it is a very complicated process, most people (including the typical enrollment manager) have a hard time articulating why it is complex. As a result, the typical fix is to throw people at it, instead of building a business tool to solve it.
Until the advent of the Internet in the late nineties it was difficult to share and collect data on the large scale necessary for the solution to this problem. Not having available a widely distributed network (the Internet), a common interface software platform (a browser) and the application development platforms to effectively utilize these tolls it was not practical to build and deliver a solution to the EDI enrollment problem.