Outsourced EDI Solutions for Retail Vendors

Business Driver: A vendor who’s trading with over 14 trading partners is expected to send a Purchase Order Acknowledgement document to its trading partner and on it convey any inventory availability as well as acceptance of purchase order terms.

Expert Advise by Steve Slavutskiy, Director of Enterprise Service

1. Integration Feed: PO Acknowledgement may be created inside internal ERP system (for example MAS500, SAP, MS Dynamics.) and sent to Direct EDI, Inc. via Universal Hosted Translator

Requirements: ERP system must be able to handle Purchase Order Acknowledgement Process.

Benefits: Leverage Internal System for PO Acknowledgement Process. Leverage Universal Hosted Translator to accommodate for individual Trading Partner Requirements.

2. Automated Work Flow: PO Acknowledgement may be created Automatically by Direct EDI, Inc. for each PO (Purchase Order to Purchase Order Acknowledgement Conversion)

Requirements: This option is only viable for Vendors who ships in full and as stipulated on original Purchase Order without exceptions.

Benefits: Eliminate Manual Data Entry. Accommodate for Trading Partner Requirements.

3. Web EDI Interface: PO Acknowledgement may be created using Web EDI system and sent to trading partners via Web EDI account.

Requirements: Human resource to interact with Web EDI account to generate Purchase Order Acknowledgement document.

Benefits: Leverage External Web EDI System to handle Purchase Order Acknowledgement process with trading partners without changing any internal infrastructure. Web EDI is a turnkey solution.

Customer Selected: Web EDI Interface (Option 3)

Reasons:

It’s cost effective and works immediately no setup time or expense.

“We have to take into consideration our inventory and ability to fill orders and communicate that via 855 PO Acknowledgement, so automation is not viable. Building this process inside our ERP system is costly. And, we are unable to Automate completely because of this issue.” Direct EDI customer.

Major Retailer's EDI Department Challenges Revealed

Today, we were talking with A Top 5 Major Retailer and they shared with us two surprising insights about their systems and their daily interactions that “jam up” their EDI processes – a community of 6,000+ vendors.

Issues Reported by A Top 5 Major Retailer

• Our entire EDI system can be brought down by a single character " ~ ". When Our AS2 Software receives an EDI document with a missing segment separator " ~ " in the ISA segment it crashes the AS2 system and all data stops flowing. Thousands of Vendors are not able to send us their documents nor can we send any documents out. While this can impact thousands of vendors at the same time, a single hour of down time seems like days.
• From the mouth of the EDI Coordinator/Detectives/Babysitters/Negotiators/...... We support thousands of vendors and I just "Love" it when one calls in and expects me to know them by company name. It's not easy to locate a vendor in a system by company name when are sifting through more than 6,000 active vendors. Half of my time on the phone is spent listening to dead silence while the person on the other end locates the vendor number or an ISA ID as I go through a list of 200 Apex Inc. and Apex LLC. entries and typically, 30 minutes later I find myself explaining the difference between "Inc." and "LLC"....

Expert Advise by: Steve Slavutskiy, Director of Enterprise Services

Managing Direct Connect operations inside your internal EDI department was a noble idea as a response to exuberant transactional charges that existed in a traditional VAN model. However, the cost of maintaining connectivity with hundreds of vendors does not leave any savings gained from elimination of VAN traffic. When the business documents are not flowing via VAN they flow in a black-box. There is no easy visibility to what happens with data when it fails. There is no easy way to locate a missing document, and that’s just the laundry list of issues before the data even makes it to production environments. What if bad data propagates amongst several internal systems? Hundreds of collective hours are spent every time it happens.

Consider Outsourcing your Direct Connect Operation to Direct EDI, Inc. Our Direct Connect Manager that has the following capabilities:

• Sheds light into your direct connect traffic
• Shares an interface with hub and each individual Trading Partner.
• Validates EDI-data, based on Trading Partner Maps in production Environment
• Monitors and Notifies both parties as Exceptions occur
• Monitors and Notifies both parties about missing or rejected Acknowledgements
• Provides interface to troubleshoot and analyze error handling, missing documents

Reprinting this content in its entirety or quoting an excerpted content is allowed as long as you follow this simple republishing procedure: You must include attribution to Direct EDI, Inc., and the following copy in no smaller than 10 point font: “This article appears courtesy of Direct EDI, Inc. For additional information and the most up-to-date content visit http://www.directedi.com.”

In-House EDI Part 2: Enablement Alternatives, It's a Whole New World! NOVEMBER 19

Designed for larger retailers and manufacturers, this webinar shows you new tools and strategies to help you succeed in vendor enablement - whether your goals are to simply provide EDI information to your vendors, get your vendors into production quickly or to issue EDI requirements…or anything in between. Learn how to communicate and motivate your vendors through a selection of products, services and strategies that deliver on your company’s EDI objectives. Part 1 is not a prerequisite.

Register Today!