Dr. Nicholas Negroponte, Director of MIT, in his book: "Being Digital" (Being Digital in 1996), established a concept that opened the doors to the future in the process of transferring information and using it, said: "We must exchange paper atoms for bits of information ”
This phrase summarizes with extreme simplicity a fundamental concept for achieving efficiency in information systems, that is, avoiding the endless process of entering data into computer systems so that they issue lists or documents that are re-entered in other computer systems that they reissue documents etc.
Dr. Negroponte proposed in his book that this whole process in which the double, triple or n-nth fingering from one system to another was replaced by digital information transfers, that is, capable systems, between different users of different companies of " be understood “in digital form…
2) The purchasing process currently:
We are going to stop for a moment and analyze how a purchasing process currently occurs in an entity that has installed computing capacity with purchasing, stock and billing systems, and Internet connection.
As we see the situation described, it would imply that the company could work efficiently with its clients or suppliers, given that it has the necessary soft and hardware capacity, but this is not the case.
Let us analyze, below, the different stages of a marketing process from its beginning, namely:
2.1) Entry of products in price list:
Suppose that we have the products to be marketed, or purchased or finished in the case of own production, and after calculating their costs and determining the profit margin of the company, we are then in a position to issue a price list, therefore the administration will generate through the income of:
| Code | Description | Price |
A price list or table which through various means, mail, print or fax, to name the most common will reach our customers.
2.2.) Determination of the purchase need:
Periodically, our clients, based on the stock review, will determine a purchase need, and therefore must internally generate a selection process for the item to be purchased based on the reading of the different price lists, their comparison and a criterion of selection based on certain parameters, purchase prices, payment terms, delivery times, etc.
2.3) Issuance of Purchase Order:
Once the order is determined, a Purchase Order will be issued by our client, which will contain the necessary data for your order to be accepted, that is:
| Article | Description | Price |
2.4) Order entry - billing:
Once the orders are accepted, they will be entered into the billing and stock systems in order to issue the invoices and / or remittances necessary to deliver the goods to our customers and proceed to the accounting record of the same.
2.5) Entry of merchandise stock - posting - payment:
Once the merchandise has been shipped, our clients, once physically controlled, will proceed to their entry into stock, for this:….. they will recode…., The articles based on their internal codes, and will enter them into their stock systems and current accounts to then proceed with your payment.
In other words, the usual norm in commercial exchange processes is that each company has its own code, generally different from that of its supplier, that is, each item is called “different”, depending on what each client calls it, if they were proper names would be:
| Provider | Customer 1 | Customer 2 | Customer 3 |
| Juan | Santiago | William | Pedro |
| Maria | Teresa | Daniela | Natalie |
Although the above table sounds cheerful, this is the reality, each product has a different “name” (code) depending on where it is located.
In my personal experience, I found this situation even more complex, in the same entity (Ministry of Health), each Hospital Center coded the articles differently.
3) Our conception of the system:
3.l) Juan is Juan everywhere:
We believe that the entire process of transferring information from systems to paper to be re-entered and controlled, would be avoided by achieving greater efficiency if the recoding of purchased items were left aside.
According to my personal reasoning and the most diverse opinions consulted, there is no reason for companies to enter their own codes, leaving aside the codes of the suppliers and having to re-enter what was entered in their offices by who carried out the billing at our suppliers.
3.2) The proposed system:
Our proposal is that the codes of their suppliers be established as internal company codes and that the power of digital systems be used for the exchange and control of information, at the level of each company, there should be tables that link before the existence of different suppliers, the different codes of each one of them and subsequently based on who makes the purchase, the appropriate code will be used.
| Provider 1 | Provider 2 | Provider 3 |
| Aaaa | Bb. | Ccc |
The system recognizes the equivalences between the different codes of the different suppliers of the same or similar article, this case is very frequent in the pharmaceutical industry, in which for the same drug with the same or similar therapeutic effect, there are different laboratories.
3.3) System operation:
Once the principle of equal supplier-client coding has been accepted, we begin to take full advantage of the facilities of computer systems and Internet connection.
Let's review again the stages of the purchase process:
3.3.1) Entry of products in the price list: this stage does not undergo modification with respect to the previous process, but it has the particularity that it constitutes the only opportunity that data is entered manually, as will be seen below.
3.3.2.) Determination of the need to purchase: this stage that responds to a finding of an administrative fact remains unchanged.
3.3.3) Issuance of Purchase Order: it is at this stage where the advantages of digitization begin to be felt, the systems based on the purchase needs and the selection made by the supplier, will digitally issue purchase orders, simply selected from the table (list) of supplier prices the items to buy, which will be sent by mail with the supplier's own codes.
3.3.4) Entry of orders - billing: once the orders have been received, the billing and stock systems will issue the corresponding invoices in digital format for registration and control and on paper for filing.
3.3.5) Entry of merchandise stock - accounting - payment: once the merchandise has been controlled, the customer's systems will be able to read the digital formats of the purchase invoices for their accounting and registration without the need for any type, without repetition of any function performed in another instance of the process.
The saving of time and control of documentation registration is incalculable, instead of people typing in the buying companies exactly the same as what was typed in the selling companies, we will have computer systems that will be able to read digital files automatically incorporating purchasing data into their tables.
4) Conclusions:
We believe that our proposal changes the concept of registration of commercial transactions, a fact that already happens at the banking level, where money movements are digital, and with this, great progress is achieved in reducing registration costs., as well as an incalculable profit in having the information in real time.
We firmly believe in this first step, the world of the digital age is just beginning, if this idea matures we will reach dialogues between systems capable of acting intelligently and almost autonomously, but that is another story…
