Since creating his first computer program in October 1967, Michael Mattias had been intrigued by computer technology—a technology he felt could find a niche in small business. People, the small businessman's single greatest asset, were spending far too many hours performing repetitive tasks—order taking, order placing, inventory management—the kind of tasks automation could address. As a non-data processing operations executive in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Mr. Mattias had met numerous IT vendors: vendors who would claim their solution would help run a business; however, it was too often too obvious these vendors had not spent so much as an hour on a sales desk, in an accounting department or on the loading dock.

After twenty-plus years in the distribution and service industries, in 1992 Mr. Mattias found himself in need of a new challenge. Deciding he could satisfy that still-active technology craving and simultaneously address the lack of Real World expertise in the IT industry, Tal Systems was born. Tal Systems would be the kind of consultant in short supply: someone who had actually worked in industry and done the jobs which needed to be done; someone who understood purchase orders, invoices and inventory management at least as well as they understood bits, bytes and baud rates.

Mr. Mattias had worked with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the early 1980s when proprietary data formats were used more than the then-fledgling ANSI ASC X12 standards. Ten years later, client EDI needs pulled Tal Systems in that direction, and its focus has remained in that arena since.

Following some large-scale EDI data management projects for a major U.S. Property-Casualty insurance firm, long-term EDI development work for a large Health Insurance firm and twenty years hands-on experience in the hard-goods supply chain, Tal Systems has added the healthcare industry to the manufacturing and distribution markets as target industries.

The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (the HIPAA) will bring some 300,000 US healthcare providers into the world of ANSI EDI applications for the first time, with more than two thousand users of the "PC-PRINT FRONT END" software developed in 1998 and the December 2001 release of the Provider Payment Partner System. Tal Systems is uniquely positioned to expand its presence on the provider desktop, offering quality, affordable software to support the smaller provider's implementation of the HIPAA mandates.

Over the past four or five years, Tal Systems has increased its emphasis on user and developer education, with more focus on writing, teaching and speaking. Over the years Mr. Mattias has published more than twenty articles on applied technology and system design, and has created numerous educational seminars for clients.

Tal Systems was incorporated in the State of Wisconsin as Tal Systems, Inc. in 2001. Mr. Mattias' latest 'non Tal Systems' project is assisting in the launch of a the Wisconsin E-Business Forum, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the education of business people in the technologies, methods and benefits of conducting all types of e-Business.

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