Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

EDI is a business documents in standard format, where communication is between organization. EDI implementation helps organization to save on time and money, if the Paper related transcation are elimated, which makes the processes easier and error free.

Manufacturing industries implement EDI to share documents right from quotation to invoice, an end-to-end solution, that is error free and keeping tension of involving in multiple tasks at bay.

What are the benefits of EDI

EDI transactions are essential to B2B processes and continue to be the preferred means to exchange documents and transactions between businesses both small and large.

There are five key business benefits that EDI technology delivers through automation and B2B integration:

Saves time and money through automation of a process previously manually executed with paper documents.

Improve efficiency and productivity because more business documents are shared and processed in less time with greater accuracy.

EDI data transfer reduces errors (PDF, 669 KB) through rigid standardization, which helps to ensure information and data are correctly formatted before they enter business processes or applications.

EDI integration improves traceability and reporting because electronic documents can be integrated with a range of IT systems to support data collection, visibility and analysis.

EDI automation supports positive customer experiences by enabling efficient transaction execution and prompt, reliable product and service delivery.

For large organizations, EDI enables standards to be instituted across trading partners to achieve benefits consistently. For smaller organizations, adherence to EDI offers greater integration with larger firms that have big budgets and strong influence.

How EDI works ?

There are two basic types of EDI transmission:

Point-to-point or direct connections: Two computers or systems connect with no intermediary over the internet, generally with secure protocols.

Value-added network (VAN): A third-party network manages data transmission, generally with a mail boxing paradigm.

EDI internet transmission protocols include Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Applicability Statement 2 or AS2, an HTTPS-based protocol, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and others. EDI data elements include items such as sender ID and receiver ID. Data segments combine two or more related elements to give them greater meaning. For example, FNAME and LNAME can combine to form CUSTOMERNAME. Envelopes structure different types of data and carry the sender and receiver address information. EDI document flow or message flow describes the movement of EDI messages to various inbound and outbound addresses and departments to execute a business process or transaction.

Meta languages such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) complement rather than replace EDI. Companies must be ready to handle an ever-increasing number of document formats and transmission options. One global manufacturer routinely exchanges about 55 different document types with nearly 2,000 partners.