Are supply chain errors costing you dear?

For businesses with manual data processes, the answer to all the above is ‘no’. In fact, data inaccuracy is costing businesses dearly. This is due to incorrect orders, persistent stockouts and order cancellations.

Sounds familiar? Then help is at hand with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The digitisation and automation provided by EDI ensure immediate and consistent data accuracy.

Find out how EDI can secure data accuracy and revitalise your business in the blog below.

There are a number of common supply chain problems. One of the key ones is manual data entry.

Why is manual data entry so unreliable? The simple answer is human error, which is extremely common. This is true no matter how diligent employees may be.

For example, mistakes can be triggered by:

• Lost or misplaced documents
• Human calculation errors
• Data entry typos
• Bad telephone notes or illegible handwriting

Additionally, the margin for error is multiplied each time a data point is manually transferred. Therefore, so does the lack of confidence in the accuracy of the information.

Studies suggest that up to 5% of all manually entered invoice data is typed incorrectly.

This is a huge handicap for any company aiming to be more efficient and customer-focused. How can any business expect to grow sales, manage costs and stay compliant with flawed data?

This level of inaccuracy not only has an impact on profitability but can also fatally undermine customer relationships. This isn’t a good look, particularly during an economic downturn.

There are many benefits for businesses implementing EDI solutions as part of a digital transformation strategy.

Research shows that cloud-based EDI systems lead to a significant increase in data quality. Some sources report a 30 to 40% reduction in transactions containing errors.

It also suggests that supply chain EDI ensures a significantly higher number of orders being right the first time. This has big knock-on effects. Firstly, it results in a 30% faster delivery time to customers. Secondly, important business cycles, such as invoice-to-cash, can improve by as much as 61%.

Cloud-based solutions from Transalis allow direct and automatic communications between computer systems in the supply chain. This means labour-intensive and error-prone keying of information is removed entirely.