When p&G began expanding the use of EDI with retailers to improve ordering efficiency, problems with order quality increased significantly. The sales representative or customer service representative in the manual process was often able to catch some of the problems and manually adjust retailers' orders to work in the p&G systems. Some of these adjustments later resulted in errors in the collections phase, but at least the order was entered and shipped. Removal of this human buffer created problems, for most EDI orders could not be processed without manual intervention. These early EDI trials with customers increased costs for P&G instead of providing savings since most orders had to be manually reworked and rekeyed into the ordering,shipping,and billing (OSB) system. Without process redesign, using EDI for ordering offered little benefit for P&G or customers, although it did highlight problems and misunderstandings.