In the first part of this two-part blog, we navigated through our webinar with Magento and went into detail about drop shipping. In this second installment, we will be reviewing the balance of our webinar, EDI, and how automation can lead to drop ship success.
As businesses grow and continue the process of fulfilling orders manually with phone calls, faxes, emails, and tracking them with spreadsheets becomes incredibly inefficient and costly. The reason why companies continue the same processes? They are comfortable with their work flow and the processes that have helped to build their business. There is a better way. These same companies have fragmented systems that are very good at “doing their portion”. The key is to leverage these systems (like Magento) by connecting them to the other systems that run their business.
EDI is one way of leveraging your internal system’s strengths. For those of you who don’t know, EDI (Electronic Data interchange) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. As it relates to drop shipping, the organizations are the supplier and retailer. EDI gives suppliers and retailers the ability to send POs (Purchase Orders EDI 850), ASN (Advance Shipment Notice EDI 856), PO Ack (Purchase Order Acknowledgement, EDI 855) and Invoices (EDI 810) electronically with no manually entry. It seems easy, but for retailers and suppliers to leverage EDI to its fullest capabilities they need a hub that can integrate it with their internal systems, like logicbroker.
Many companies that are using EDI have limited automation and integration. The true value of EDI is realized when it’s properly integrated with the various systems in your supply chain. Integration helps make companies more efficient and reduces costs by eliminating manual touches and data entry.
Please take a moment to view the webinar in its entirety.
