Encounter Customer Demand Shifts with Modern EDI Solution

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been garnering eyeballs in the recent years with its ability to upgrade organizations by automating the process of data exchange to enhance communication and collaboration across the business ecosystem.

EDI is essentially a platform to exchange business documents between business partners in a standard electronic format. EDI is an insightful approach several organizations have endorsed to gain agility and process optimization in their business operations. As you may know, manually processing orders doesn’t work if the volume of documents increases substantially. EDI requires no manual re-keying and warrants a 100% error-free data exchange with high speed and accuracy, resulting in shorter order-to-cash cycles.

Fluctuating Customer Demands

The revolution of social media and mobile computing platforms have fluctuated customer demands and enterprises are forced to go out of their comfort zone to build a strong rapport with their customers.

EDI lays a foundation for such businesses by meeting customer demands and expedites the orders at the earliest. Businesses can ensure order accuracy and accelerate payments, while offering the customers the luxury of real-time order tracking.

Essential Features of an Ideal EDI Solution

Organizations have acknowledged the need for an EDI solution, but the question remains as to which EDI solution fits their bill. Most organizations require a comprehensive and a cost-efficient EDI solution that helps them in the long run. Here’s a list of 5 features small businesses must look for in their EDI solution:

Simple Installation and Deployment

As organizations have limited resources, you must choose an EDI solution that doesn’t take a toll on your IT resources or require an extensive training program. Assuming your business invested a lot of time during the transition phase, your EDI solution must be simple to install and operate. Choosing a simple and intuitive EDI tool, your business can free your employees from the manual efforts of keying data, free of human errors.

Comprehensive EDI Support

The EDI solutions that are tailor-made for businesses-all-size, come with built-in support for all major document types and EDI standards. For starters, you might want to exchange invoices or purchase orders with your EDI solution. As time progresses, your EDI solution can upgrade to electronic trading with customers to maintain a healthy relationship.

You must also ensure whether your EDI solution can handle all EDI document standards such as ANSI, EDIFACT, and AS2 to accommodate a larger audience.

In-built EDI Templates

When you initially start connecting with your trading partners, there is a lot of document translation and mapping process to ensure a seamless exchange of purchase orders from your ERP portal to the customer’s portal. Businesses must look for predefined templates in their EDI solution to assist in this process.

ERP and Accounts Integration

While the transmission of EDI documents can be performed efficiently by your EDI solution, it doesn’t allow end-to-end data transfer from your accounting and ERP systems. Although small businesses like yours can still manage at the beginning, it’s crucial for your business to have this feature as your business grows.

Scalability

With the help of an ideal EDI solution, your business can reach newer heights while you focus on more value-added activities. As you connect with a larger audience as time progresses, your EDI solution will be able to scale without any need of dedicated staff to monitor your EDI capabilities. Some organizations can even consider the notion of deploying cloud-based EDI services to ensure limitless customer connections and interactions.

While it may still be a customer mandate that forces you to consider an EDI solution, businesses must only see it as an opportunity to compete in the digitally driven world.

However, a full-fledged B2B EDI approach is never a good option to start with. Our advice would be to start small and adopt a phased approach and then capitalize on customer interactions as your business progresses.

Sign up for a free consultation to get insights on the best EDI solution and approach for your business or contact us at info@aspiresys.com

Click here to read : 5 Simple rules to be in compliance with EDI standards