NEECOM Spring Conference Agenda May 18th and 19th 2022 – Speakers and Topics:
NEECOM Agenda for Day 1 – Wednesday May 18th, 2022
Morning Program:
8:00 Registration/Continental Breakfast
9:00 Annual Meeting and Opening Remarks
NEECOM President, Ira Keltz, Mass General Brigham
9:15
EDI Innovation – the last 50 years vs. the next 50 years
Mike Kersels, Founder, Highview
Platypus and how it relates to the history of EDI. More than just “Putting lipstick on a pig” – innovating old technology that will not be replaced by XML, Blockchain, etc.
10:00
Mission: Digital Transformation / Goal: Customer Satisfaction
Michael Muhlfelder Vice President of Sales, North America, Jitterbit
The pandemic has changed buying and selling behaviors across industries and sped up the need for full-scale digital transformation. Leading the transformation is EDI and eCommerce as both integrated and integral components of the go to market strategy. Done right, companies enjoy happy customers and revenue growth.
10:45 Networking and Refreshment Break
11:15
Unlocking the Power of Your Big Data
Boris Ivanov (CTO, Digital Business Architects)
This presentation will cover best practices and tools that can turn your data into valuable business insights. Discover how to transform spreadsheets and disparate data extracts into powerful reports and charts that help you answer key questions on the fly. See how you can organize data visualizations into meaningful dashboards to eliminate manual, time-consuming processes, improve visibility across the enterprise, and achieve superior business results.
12:00 Lunch
Afternoon Program:
1:15
The Importance of “Humans” in an AI & EDI World
Inez Blackburn – Keynote Speaker
The 20th Century set the stage for the rise of AI, Machine Learning and a vision of automation that marginalized humans. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is highly correlated with this vision of a structured and perfect world where accurate digital data is seamlessly transmitted between companies from machine to machine, replacing paper-based human exchanges. Well, it has been over 20 years, and humans are still extremely important. AI surrounds us in our smartphones, YouTube’s recommendation engine, and Google Search. AI is in numerous driver-assist features in many hospitals where AI diagnoses MRI images and our policing systems with facial recognition.
The EDI philosophy of eliminating human exchanges to increase accuracy and productivity differs from AI and Machine Learning. Science fiction positions artificial intelligence as a new technology independent from its creators, similar to the Matrix or Terminator, where humanity is redundant.
Do not fear because we are far from artificial intelligence capable of learning and understanding new things with emotion or consciousness. Today, artificial intelligence is weak and focuses on human cognitive capacities for a specific domain. EDI’s prime directive is to automate repetitive human tasks and interactions, whereas AI is focused on helping humans become more effective and efficient by making their tasks easier.
This session will provide an overview of the impact and opportunity of AI & Machine Learning on businesses today and why humans will play a pivotal role in the future.
2:15
The Power of Inventory Accuracy: How retailers can work with inventory accuracy in stores to drive sales and outpace competition
Daniel W. Steeneck, Ph.D., Co-Founder of Akuret
Focusing on inventory accuracy has large benefits across a retailer’s operations and sales channels and retailers can outpace their competition by working in a structured way to improve inventory accuracy. This talk will focus on (1) the enormous importance of inventory accuracy today’s retail environment, (2) the reasons retailers struggle to maintain high accuracy and product availability, even with sophisticated POS and CAO systems, and (3) a new paradigm for achieving high inventory accuracy through being process and data driven.
3:00 Networking and Refreshment Break
3:30
The DEATH of EDI
Gregg Lanni, EDI SME at Boomi LP
As the death of EDI is once again being foretold, come and eulogize our beloved technology and hear why people believe EDI is at its end of days and get one person’s perspective on the life of this once great technology and what the future might have in store for it.
4:15 Raffle/Refreshments/Networking/Adjourn
NEECOM Agenda for Day 2 – Thursday May 19th, 2022
Day 2: Dual Track Education Sessions
Track 1 –
EDI-101 – A Full Day Overview of Electronic Data Interchange
Tony D’Angelo – Loren Data Corp
Are you new to EDI? Does everything seem confusing and difficult to understand?
This session will break down each component and give you a greater comprehension of this technology. From its beginnings to the X12 standards, translation software, communications choices and beyond you will learn what a day in the life of an EDI coordinator should be. Your instructor has 30 years of experience working with EDI in manufacturing, translation software programmer, network VAN manager, and as a consultant. In this full-day class, you will receive as much of his experience as possible. Also hear what the future might bring to the industry as well as an opportunity to ask the questions that no one else will answer.
8:00AM – 3:30PM
Track 2 –
Leadership in a Virtual World Series Full Day Training
Eric Bloom – IT Management and Leadership Institute
- Working on a Virtual Team
- Managing Teams in a Virtual Workplace
- Managing Hybrid Teams (in-office and virtual employees)
- Effective Communication in a Virtual Workplace
- Leading Through Influence in a Virtual Workplace
8:00AM – 3:30PM
8:00 Registration/Continental Breakfast
8:30 EDI 101 Part One: EDI Fundamentals
10:00 Networking and Refreshment Break
10:15 EDI 101 Part Two: EDI Translation and Business Application
12:00 Lunch
1:00 EDI 101 Part Three: Communication Types and Strategies for Successful EDI Implementation
2:30 Networking and Refreshment Break
2:45 EDI 101
Part Four: Q&A – answering your specific EDI questions
3:30 Adjourn
