Implementing EDI (electronic data interchange) is becoming increasingly popular among small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). These businesses choose to implement EDI because they can do business with large retailers and send and receive order information in one format, rather than emails, phone calls, or faxes. EDI has been praised for its efficiency and automation capabilities, but is your EDI solution truly automated? If you have not implemented an end-to-end EDI solution, manual touches will still be in your order fulfillment process.
Many retailers and suppliers will implement EDI, yet still have to log into multiple portals to verify and complete orders. If you are spending just one hour a day manually processing orders, in a typical work year that will add up to 250 hours, which is simplified to 31 work days. With an end-to-end EDI solution, you get that month back. With end-to-end EDI, your provider maps to your trading partner’s EDI so documents flow effortlessly between the systems and eliminating the need for you to log into portals.
When your end-to-end EDI solution is up and running, your business will perform more efficiently. Without manual touches, errors are eliminated from the order fulfillment, saving you time and money. Tracking information can be brought over, ensuring it is always accurate, which eliminates costly shipping errors. With no errors, no time will be spent correcting errors. With manual EDI, if you were importing/exporting information multiple times a day, it would be easy to duplicate or miss orders, which would alter the authenticity of your books. When numbers were off, time would be lost painstakingly going over orders to find out where the error was. Fortunately, end-to-end EDI ensures that scenario never happens.
A true end-to-end EDI solution will integrate your internal systems as well. By integrating your shopping cart, accounting software, and order management software, your inventory will reflect what is available on your online store, and the order fulfillment process becomes seamless and accurate.
In today’s eCommerce ecosystem, EDI is becoming a mandate. It opens the door to more business opportunities and allows your business to run more efficiently. By implementing an end-to-end EDI solution, you are optimizing your business in a way that EDI cannot. For more information on implementing end-to-end EDI, click here.
