Turning Challenges Into AGIIS Enhancement

AGIIS Insider

Turning a Challenge into an AGIIS Enhancement

By Josh Wall, AGIIS Product Manager

At AgGateway we talk a lot about the importance of collaboration in the continuous improvement of our systems. This month I would like to share an example of how members, leadership and staff worked together to overcome a significant challenge brought forward by an Ag Industry Identification System (AGIIS) subscriber.

Working together we created a better AGIIS, and this is how I believe the founders of AgGateway envisioned the organization would get work accomplished to make a difference.

It started in December, when an AGIIS subscriber contacted Member Services regarding a struggle they were experiencing with an entity in the AGIIS Directory. The subscriber was finding non-address related data (in this example, a person’s name) in Address Line 1 which is not defined in the AGIIS business rules. The extra data included in the entity was causing transaction processing confusion with the subscriber’s trading partners.

The Member Services team researched the information provided by the subscriber and determined there were approximately 102,000 entities that fell into the same scenario. It was also determined there is not a current system edit in place to prevent non-address information from being entered into Address Line 1.

The next step was to present this entity scenario to the AGIIS Directory Oversight Committee (DOC), the group responsible for overseeing the maintenance and care of the data in AGIIS. The DOC also reviews subscriber requests, evaluates enhancements, and establishes policy that will improve AGIIS and ensure data quality and integrity.

The entity scenario was reviewed at the January DOC call, and it was determined that an additional system edit could be put in place to improve data quality. However, the committee wanted to receive broader input from AGIIS users to understand the full impact of their decision. A few days after the DOC call, Member Services sent out a Call for Participation to AGIIS users describing the entity scenario and requesting participation on 9 February call.

There were over 50 AGIIS users that attended the call. During the call, we reviewed the entity scenario in question, discussed current business rules pertaining to the scenario, provided data examples, and discussed proposed improvements. The call was productive, and the DOC was able to obtain the information they were seeking to move forward with an enhancement to AGIIS and ultimately, a pain point will be resolved for AGIIS users in a timely manner.

I wanted to spotlight this success story so AgGateway members can be assured the organization you are involved in is working as designed – and to remind you that if you have a pain point, your voice will be heard.

The DOC has a set amount of development units that are dedicated each year to support AGIIS enhancements. If you’d like to review how we’ve allocated these units to enhance AGIIS in the past, I encourage you to visit our AGIIS Enhancements Page on the AgGateway website. If you have an idea to improve the Directory, we welcome your input. The process is easy – simply complete the short AGIIS Enhancement Request Form and return it to Member.Services@AgGateway.org.