EDI Definition

EDI is a technology that enables businesses to exchange essential documents, relating to the trading of goods, frictionlessly and digitally without the need for manual intervention.

If your business is involved in the selling and buying of products with multiple retailers, manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers, in all likelihood you will already be using EDI. Your EDI is also likely to be integrated within the infrastructure of your business, sending and receiving information directly with your ERP, order management, accounting and other internal systems.

EDI makes your business processes more efficient, giving you visibility and transparency across your entire business operations and your connected wider trading network.

EDI is not only used by businesses to manage the trade of goods with a large number of trading partners. Many smaller manufacturers, with just one or two retail partners, find themselves required to exchange invoices or orders digitally via EDI.

Many of the large supermarkets mandate their suppliers to receive orders, shipping notices and other trade documents via an EDI platform. For instance, Ocado recently mandated its suppliers to submit all invoices via EDI, in effect from the end of June 2021. Morrisons already mandate EDI for invoices and orders, but extended this to include Advanced Shipment Notices (ASNs), Purchase Orders and Proof of Delivery.

If you’ve been told you need to start using EDI to exchange documents, don’t worry. It doesn’t need to be complex to set up or even expensive to use. An EDI solution will save you time and money, enabling you to manage all of your digital documents on a simple to use SaaS platform.

For frictionless trade processing, you may want to integrate your EDI with other inhouse systems to ensure information is shared instantly and accurately across your entire organisation.

This not only eliminates error-prone manual processing such as re-keying of data from one system to another, it also means that you have instant visibility across all of your orders and deliveries. This enables you to manage your stock control, allocate resource where it’s needed, manage cashflow and identify and fix potential blockages in your supply chain before they become a problem.

The Transalis Integration Team offer a consultancy service with a choice of fixed-price EDI integration with ERP, order management, accounting and other internal systems via an API. Alternatively, they can set up partial integrations using automated FTP updates mapped to your system.

A recent survey of 250 decision makers found that many providers are not placing their customers’ needs at the heart of what they do.*

50% said it took their provider too long to resolve issues, 45% cited difficulties and delays integrating with other systems and 42% said that change requests were too costly.*

Transalis promises an easy to buy, simple to switch approach to EDI, placing customers at the heart of everything.