IGNOU : M.COM : IBO 4 : UNIT 4 : Q - 4. What is the role of VAN?

 

Ans. The role of van

 It was clear from the outset that any organization, committed to EDI, would have a requirement to communicate with a large number of different organizations, whether these be supplies, distributors, banks etc. The function of the VAN therefore was to provide a single channel to facilitate this type of communication.

The VANS support links to their networks for all of the main computer hardware and software operating environments. When you join a VAN you need only be concerned about your link to the network whether it be from a PC, mini or mainframe computer. What your customers or suppliers use to connect to the network need not concern you at all, as the VAN will take care of all these individual connections to their services.

Until recently, there was a limiting factor, in that there were no connections between networks. As a result, the early development of user communities tended to focus around a particular VAN.

Mail-boxing : At its core the VAN is essentially an electronic post office. It receives electronic messages which may be orders, invoices etc., reads the addressing information contained in the ED1 envelope surrounding these messages and posts them into the mailbox of the recipient. All of them can be accomplished within a matter of seconds ensuring that critical business documents can be received by trading partners within minutes.

Security :  Because of the commercial sensitivity of some of the documents transmitted e.g. invoices, the VANS suppliers have ensured that high levels of security are maintained. Access to VANS services are password controlled and most VANS offer Trading Relationship validation as a means of ensuring that only authorized messages or documents may be transmitted. Therefore, if you wish to send an order electronically to a supplier you will have to specify this in detail and set it up on the VAN. Equally your supplier will have to set up his side of the relationship and thus accept receipt of that order document. Only once matching relationships have been set up, the network allows transmission and receipt of the document by the consenting parties.

Audit Control : It will be obvious from the above that it is essential for the VANS to provide the end user with a full audit trail, so that users have information at their disposal with which to manage their use of such services, These facilities are now generally available as a function both of the networks themselves and the software packages that are available for connection to the networks. As previously stated, however, detailed end to end audit is not available via most of the available network interconnections.