Many JD Edwards customers use DSI’s dcLink to integrate scanning into their supply chains, as it enables handheld scanners to send inventory transactions to JDE. Specifically, customers often use dcLink for scanning inventory for goods receipt, quality control checks, and issuing goods. As with any other important software component of a supply chain, you should ensure you have support and maintenance for DSI dcLink in order to keep your business running smoothly. Unfortunately, this may prove to be a more expensive proposition than you might imagine.
DSI usually charges a percentage of license fees for support
DSI will usually charge you a percentage of your license fees for dcLink support and maintenance. In return, you get access to DSI’s support site with general information and configuration details on dcLink, access to bug fixes and other software updates, and access to DSI’s support technicians—all the things you can’t afford to do without. DSI dcLink is not a cheap product to begin with, however, so JD Edwards customers should expect to pay significant fees for necessary support and maintenance.
DSI Support doesn’t always mean support
Many customers have reported that DSI is asking them to pay for managed services hours in return for handling questions and inquiries that would traditionally be considered basic support. In fact, DSI may require you to purchase managed services hours from them up front before they will answer your inquiry. These managed services hours are usually done on a bucket-of-hours arrangement. So, while you may only need a single answer to a single question, you may be required to pay for a larger support option. This could lead to you paying significantly more for ‘support’ for DSI dcLink than you may have expected!
Customers may also be required to re-up support with a new maintenance agreement from DSI in order to upgrade to 64-bit processing.
DSI dcLink Managed Services
Finally, many customers have noted that, even after paying significant fees to DSI for both maintenance and support as well as managed services, they were still unable to resolve the problem that they took to DSI in the first place! So, not only did the customer pay DSI for what they thought was basic support, and then pay them additional fees for managed services, DSI still did not resolve their problem!
Having an integral part of your supply chain tied to a piece of software that is not only expensive but not well supported either should make you nervous. Another area of potential concern here is the fact that DSI was recently purchased by Nextworld, an ERP competitor to JD Edwards. Why Nextworld would buy a barcode scanning company is unclear, and we can only hope that nothing connected with the purchase of DSI has further compromised support levels for DSI’s JD Edwards customers.
Low Cost of Ownership Alternative
In contrast with DSI dcLink, ERP Suites Scanability is an orchestration-based scanning solution. Using Orchestrations lowers the ongoing costs of successfully integrating your scanning solution with JD Edwards, including where patches, upgrades, modifications, and personalization are concerned. This means it uses your existing business logic and will continue to align with Oracle’s plans. If you want to lower your ongoing costs of JD Edwards, removing dependencies on third-party applications with their limited resources and costly support infrastructure is a great start.
David Schenz
David Schenz is a leader in building teams that deliver complex business systems transformations and roll-outs. With nearly ten years SAP experience, he offers deep knowledge of retail accounting processes, insurance accounting, and retail business strategies. As Director at ERP Suites, David guides employees toward a common goal of helping customers achieve optimal success.
