What's the best EDI for manufacturing?

Manufacturers in all sectors are redoubling their efforts to stay competitive as the long-term effects of the pandemic continue. That means bearing down on costs to drive ever-greater efficiencies in operations. When it comes to the processing and exchange of essential trading data, finding the best EDI for manufacturing can help you achieve frictionless relationships with your retailers, wholesalers and customers.

But how exactly does EDI benefit manufacturing, and how can you take advantage?

EDI is a means of exchanging business documents relating to B2B supply chain transactions with minimal requirement for manual intervention.

As well as orders and invoices, EDI for manufacturing automates the use of Advanced Shipment Notices (ASNs), quotes, despatch and returns instructions, tax summaries, debit and credit notes, remittance advice and many other kinds of documentation.

The exchange of documents can include structured, quantitative data characterised by numbers, values and tabular-type entries, and unstructured, qualitative-type data typically found in, for example, text files or emails.

EDI works by reformatting the data in line with internationally recognised standards that can be read by different computers and systems.

“These customers were sending pdfs and email attachments as the output from their ERP systems. We would have to print off and rekey the information into our ERP system. There was lots of time involved. It was not the most efficient way to do things. We had to staple printouts to a matching internal form showing the customer number and SKU. It was so time consuming and repetitive, and there was always the opportunity for human errors creeping in through mistakes in transcription.”

Now, everything runs frictionlessly using a cloud-based EDI from digital supply chain technology provider Transalis. PDFs and other email attachments are translated into EDI file formats and accessed through ‘open database connectivity’, something AG Barr is used to in its production processes.

All the data processing involved has been automated and streamlined. Analysing the benefits, John Thompson, Integrated Systems Manager and Business Process Lead, says £200,000 was quickly saved from a dramatic drop in the use of credit notes to rectify human errors.

“Being able to put orders automatically into the system is a big timesaver for all aspects of operational correspondence,” says John. “The platform has made life easier for our customer service team. It really has made a positive difference. We are seeing ROI by having people focused on more value-added activity. Customer ratings and feedback also show we have improved customer satisfaction levels.”