Promethean was originally named EC/EDI, Inc. and was founded in early 1995 by Steve Montgomery. As an entrepreneur, and based on his many years of experience working with Electronic Data Interchange, Steve had developed the idea to start a company that provided outsourced EDI services. Steve’s idea was to create a company that offered a service that would handle all the aspects of doing business via EDI, including the hardware, software and personnel that was required. This would be a third-party service to be used as a strategic option for companies that did not want to take on the cost and processing issues of doing EDI themselves. In a nutshell, the service would act as the EDI department for a particular business.

When Steve first started the business, it was a very simple operation, utilizing EDI-to-fax, consulting services, and a small EDI translator. At that time, Steve was the sole owner and the sole employee.

In September 1995, John Williamson started employment at EC/EDI, Inc., headquartered in Hudson, Ohio. Steve and John had known each other about 6 years at that time and had worked together while John was consulting for another company. When John joined EC/EDI, Inc., he worked primarily as a consultant at client sites, providing EDI and other types of technical consulting.

Over the next few years, EC/EDI grew both its customer base and its personnel staff. The new employees provided technical support for the EDI system, along with consulting and administrative functions. Some of the work was done at client sites, but as the years went on, almost all work was done at the company headquarters.

In January of 2004, EC/EDI, Inc. relocated their headquarters to Twinsburg, Ohio. In April of 2004, for various tax, financial, organizational, and logistical purposes, EC/EDI, Inc. changed its legal business from a Sub Chapter S-Corp. to a Limited Liability Company. At that time the company became known as EC/EDI, Ltd.

Over the years, in addition to adding staff, EC/EDI significantly upgraded their technical infrastructure. With the move to the new Twinsburg location, a new, self-contained data center was constructed, and many improvements were made in the way of security, technical support, monitoring, and back-up systems.

The customer base and revenue continued to grow, and in 2006, EC/EDI had a customer base of about 60 customers, ranging in size from very small to rather large, and provided a variety of services and functions for those clients.

In 2008, a decision was made to supplement the thriving Managed EDI Services operation with additional software development, with the long term goal of becoming a true software company, one that would enhance the MES operation in addition to offering a much larger portfolio of services. In that regard, the company was changed to Promethean Software Services, Inc.

The continued development of the FireWeb Exchange Network allowed for a diverse set of offerings and an increased functionality internally, and the Managed Services part of the business also continued to grow. In 2011, Promethean continued to expand its staff in both the MES department and the software development group.

In 2013, Promethean invested in a brand new headquarters in Stow, Ohio and drastically upgraded not only the working environment, but also the data center, processing power and capacity, disaster backup and recovery, and overall network efficiency.

Late in 2013, a new sales and marketing effort was launched, focusing on a new branding and a more aggressive sales approach in the Managed EDI marketplace, creating a much more dynamic image of the company that reflects the sophistication of how the company and its products have evolved.

In 2015, Promethean drastically upgraded their internal translation capabilities, allowing for a more dynamic any-to-any translation of data, which opened up new service offerings for their clients.

In the last 2 years, Promethean has created the infrastructure base for an entirely new service in the way of data visibility, reporting, and analytics. Taking advantage of the abundance of EDI data available, an infrastructure was built that can provide their clients with online applications and reporting to see data volumes, trends, product and pricing information, and a multitude of other customized reports, all via online dashboards. In this regard, and as the first initial offering in the new area, they launched a brand new, user-friendly portal in early 2020. This custom portal was the result of current client feedback and market research to ultimately improve the overall customer experience. It offers more features and capabilities for the end-user, allowing for full functionality and control, and is just the start of a whole new series of customer services for their clients.