NACS DUMPS STANDARDS COMMITTEE

May 13, 2000

Sometime after their last meeting, NACS lost confidence in their standards committee and on or about April 13, they apparently decided to dump their standards committee and grab the brass ring before somebody else did. It looks like NACS has decided to get into the POS business, which may be the only way that they can gain control of this "Vortal" that they so dearly want.

Can you blame them? This eCommerce, B2B and B2C stuff is going to create a multibillion-dollar industry. NACS is a political organization, and what politician wouldn't want to obtain total control over a multibillion-dollar supply chain?

 I'm a little worried about this. First they claim it will be open and neutral. But "Registration", "User ID's", "Passwords", "Members Only", etc., spells 'Control' with a capital 'C', and those are the things we see on their site. Mark my words. If NACS succeeds in their coup; you are going to have to ask their permission to get into this "open" environment. Anytime you see someone emphasizing, "free", "neutral", "open" - look out.

So now NACS is going to force standards on the rest of us. That could be a problem in more ways than one. I don't see where NACS has any diplomas or experience in Planning, Analysis, Relational Database Design, Construction and Implementation of computer software. And anyway, it's probably too late for them to enforce their on brand of standards. In my opinion I think they've just made a lot of people mad.

 They've alienated all the vendors that they have been working with, and even the ones they have ignored in the past. Their members who are satisfied with the systems they have now aren't going to stand for NACS telling them that they can't gain access to this precious "Vortal" unless they switch software companies. Does anybody but me remember how IBM tried to take back control of the PC market with the infamous PS/2? NACS needs to learn from IBM.

NO MATTER HOW BIG YOU THINK YOU ARE, THE MARKET IS BIGGER!

As of this writing, there are over 200 companies trying to get control of this industry. NACS knows, as I do, that there can be only one Big Cheese in all of this. So what does NACS do? They partner with an Israeli company that nobody has ever heard of. Why?

Why not a U.S. company? Why not a company they have been working with to design these standards for five years. Why not Pinnacle who has worked hard on trying to give NACS the standards they wanted. Why not Radiant who 'claims' they have AOL's money and Microsoft's support. Why not RetailersMarketExchange with Chevron, Wal-Mart, PDI and Oracle in their back pocket? Why not StoreReport who actually has a system up and running and has IBM's support? Why this company in Israel?

NACS made a terrible mistake with this "Standards Committee" in the beginning. I for one warned them back in 1993 or 1994 that it would be impossible to get four or five competing vendors to agree on a set of standards. But there is another thing I told them. If you want standards they must be 'forced', but I didn't mean by NACS. The 'forcing' has to come from the market.

NACS has made the right move by supporting a vendor with a set of standards. I just question the "standards" that they are supporting. Last week they were supporting XML, but it looks like the vendor they have chosen is supporting EDI - two completely and unrelated exchange formats. So now do we dump our XLM interfaces and start working on EDI templates?

But NACS has made another monumental mistake. Because of their lust for control, it looks to me like NACS has gone into business with this unknown Israeli company with a large customer base in Europe and that is not going to set well with their members at all. This will prove to be a very bad decision and may lead to the end of NACS, as we know it. It has certainly opened the door for another "coup de tat".

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