The Partner Channel Magazine Winter 2016

INTERVIEWEE
Dennis Bruce,
director of business development
WEBSITE
www.datamasons.com
HEADQUARTERS
Sarasota, Florida
ISV PROFILE
DATA MASONS SOFTWARE
Since 1996, Data Masons Software has specialized in simplifying electronic data
interchange (EDI) by providing tight integration and compliance management services.
Data Masons’ EDI Made Simple® approach offers advanced turnkey EDI solutions.
The Partner Channel (TPC): How did Data
Masons Software get its start?
Dennis Bruce (DB): In 1996, we started
as a consulting company focused on EDI
integration for enterprise resource planning
(ERP). Then in the early 2000s, the decision
was made to take our efforts and turn it into
a product to sell. In 2004, we started to work
on Microsoft Dynamics, and finally in 2007,
we decided to heavily focus on the Microsoft
Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and
Microsoft Dynamics NAV markets.
TPC: “EDI Made Simple” is your tagline. In
what ways do you make EDI simple?
DB: We have three main ways to simplify EDI for our customers.
1. We focus on Microsoft Dynamics. 2. We manage integration
and compliance work for the trading partner’s documents and
a customer’s ERP. And 3. We automate the entire EDI process,
taking error-prone manual processes out of the equation.
TPC: Walk us through how this is all done for your customers.
DB: Our solutions sit outside of ERP. We don’t customize the
Dennis Bruce, director of
business development
ERP but integrate EDI at a deep level. We
simplify the approach so customers don’t have
to modify their ERP to accommodate EDI.
This way users can take advantage of new ERP
functionality immediately after a new upgrade
from Microsoft and not worry about its effect
on EDI.
Data Masons handles all the nuances of
the trading partner relationship so that our
customers don’t have to. Each trading partner
has their own way of doing business, so we
standardize and normalize their data before
passing it back and forth within our customer’s
ERP. Customers don’t have to jump through
hoops for every single trading partner. When
trading partners make changes, Data Masons will manage all
those compliance changes at no additional cost to the customer.
TPC: What industries need EDI the most?
DB: EDI was born out of the automotive industry and blossomed
out into areas such as consumer packaged goods and other
industries. Each vertical segment relies heavily on EDI, but the
requested document sets are typically different for each niche.
42 WINTER 2016 | THEPARTNERCHANNEL.COM