What to look for when choosing a partner to connect to Amazon EDI

Whether you want to partner with Amazon through Vendor Central, Seller Central or Direct Fulfilment, a robust and secure EDI connection is essential. There are only a few EDI providers that can achieve this as connection must be via SFTP, AS2 and or REST API and each Amazon platform requires different message types and formats.

An EDI solution with all the necessary integrations on one system is also highly advised. This approach means you don’t need to log in to Amazon to process your orders or update product details or inventory. Instead, it’s possible to process Amazon orders using your EDI platform or from an ERP system, the same way other EDI orders are processed.

Transalis eDI™ is a market-leading solution specifically designed to ensure order processing is more efficient, quicker and more accurate.

For example, if you want to send an order response code to multiple line items simultaneously, market-leading EDI solutions have a global setting enabling you to copy a response code to each line item.

Best-in-class EDI solutions also enable users to customise the format of shipping labels.

For example, it is possible to print shipping labels for multiple products in a carton and generate pallet label.

They also enable you to send an inventory report from your ERP system to Amazon Vendor Central without having to manually upload this information. A market-leading EDI solution will give you the flexibility to automatically share inventory reports in different ways depending on the requirements of different trading partners, avoiding an inflexible one-size-fits-all approach.

Before you choose an EDI partner it’s important that you ensure they have Amazon accreditation, otherwise their set-up and system configuration process will be compromised. This means, for example, you won’t be able to test critical data fields such as customer addresses.

The Amazon team recently commended the Transalis team for their excellent service:

“It was a pleasure to work with the Transalis team. Quick responses to emails & turnaround of documents was greatly appreciated.

“Amazon expects vendors to integrate within 4 weeks. Some take much longer. Transalis took just two weeks from start to finish & included AS2 testing which tends to take other vendors much longer. Even having 2-3 test files per transaction before passing the Amazon validations, the speed at which requested changes were made, was very commendable.”

The potential sales volumes achievable through Amazon, high customer fulfillment expectations and the need to process orders accurately, all point to EDI as the tool of choice for any vendor aiming for a profitable partnership with Jeff Bezos’ behemoth.

To find out more about different types of Amazon connections and why EDI is important read our blog Why EDI is a vital ingredient in any partnership with Amazon.

Would you like to harness the power of cloud-based EDI from Transalis to drive your Amazon partnership?