What is EDI?
What is EDI?
What are EDI documents?
How does EDI work?
What are the advantages of EDI?
Find out how the switch to electronic data exchange works and when it makes sense to implement EDI in your company
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What you should consider when it comes to EDI
EDI (= Electronic Data Interchange) may already be familiar to many people in the business world. Yet many companies are not yet using this technology despite its many benefits. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) describes the electronic exchange of business documents (e.g. orders, delivery notes, etc.) in the form of structured data based on established international standards. Manual intervention is no longer necessary. Data can be exchanged and processed across company boundaries regardless of the format.
Find out more about this topic in our EDI guide. Find answers to any other questions you may have.
How exactly does electronic data exchange work?
EDI is actually very simple. The data from your business partner’s ERP system can be called up using EDI, sent in seconds and then processed in the recipient’s system. The data or business documents to be transmitted are first transformed into a standard EDI format, which can be read and transmitted by all transport protocols (of the recipient and sender).
This enables business partners to exchange documents around the world. With EDI, these documents can be transferred as easily as in your own ERP system.
Various EDI message formats, including EDIFACT, ODETTE, ZUGFeRD, SWIFT, ANSI X.12 and many more, are available for sending documents by EDI. Globally, the best-known message format is EDIFACT, which is used for cross-industry electronic data exchange.
Transport protocols such as AS2, AS4, OFTP, HTTPS or FTP are required to transmit the EDI messages mentioned above. EDI can be used to send a wide variety of documents, from orders, invoices to offers and contracts. Most of them are business and/or trading partners who exchange goods or services as part of supply chain management.
The electronic data exchange at INPOSIA works as follows: The document, e.g. invoice (INVOIC) is generated with all the necessary information from the exhibitor’s ERP / merchandise management software program. The EDI converter converts the data into the agreed format of the recipient and transmits it. As soon as the EDI message arrives at the recipient, the data is adapted to the recipient’s ERP data structure and processed there.
What EDI Standards and data formats are there?
The international standard for EDI is EDIFACT and XML, although other formats are used depending on the industry and region, including:
Out of the box available EDI data formats
all other structured data formats
What are the benefits of EDI?
By switching to EDI you can achieve considerable cost benefits for your trading partners and every document that is transmitted through electronic data exchange increases the savings. EDI therefore has many benefits, particularly from a financial perspective. You can save up to 80% of the costs compared to paper invoices simply by eliminating printing & postage costs. In addition, the EU reported that € 120 can be saved per invoice by spending 10 fewer minutes on processing.
However, cost benefits are not the only benefits of switching to EDI.
BENEFITS
- Increase in business efficiency – up to 50% savings in personnel resources
- Improve the speed and accuracy of business processes
- More efficient supply chain thanks to more precise data – up to 30% faster delivery time to the customer
- Improved cash flow thanks to shorter lead times between ordering and payment
SAVINGS
- € 1.53 / invoice at the invoicing party
- 4 € to 15 € / invoice at the invoice recipient
- Save 25 days of processing time when switching to e-invoicing with EDI
- Sending invoices via EDI only costs a third of the paper version
- fast transactions that take up to 5 days to complete
What is an EDI document ?
An EDI document primarily replaces the paper document with an electronic document. An EDI document that is sent has a standard format that the recipient and the sender use. In this way, the document can be read by both the sender and recipient’s ERP systems and the information can be safely exchanged. An EDI document can therefore be an order, invoice, order request and much more. The international and cross-industry standard for the transfer of EDI documents is EDIFACT.
What is EDIFACT?
In our era of globalization, EDIFACT is the standard for cross-sector, international information exchange. EDIFACT is responsible for mapping and transferring different business processes such as orders, invoices, customs declarations and much more. A total of over 200 EDIFACT messages have already been defined. Every EDIFACT message is named with a uniform and unique six-digit abbreviation, which remains the same internationally.
EDI can also be used to transfer other documents such as bank statements, shipping notices, offers, freight documents and much more. EDI makes it easier for you to exchange documents with your business partners and suppliers.
Electronic data exchange for small businesses and medium-sized companies
Digitalization is now also demanding that small and medium-sized companies have more efficient communication processes between business partners and suppliers.
While many suppliers still rely on office corpses such as fax, Excel and co. business partners now have to transmit data more effectively. We have developed a solution for small and medium-sized companies that uses WebEDI to form continuous, seamless process chains between business partners. With WebEDI, documents, from order confirmation to invoice, can be mapped seamlessly and securely, and electronic data exchange can be simplified for smaller companies.
WebEDI offers the following benefits:
- Reduced manual effort for business partners through data integration
- Reduced effort for business partner briefing through intuitive user guidance
- Lower process costs, time savings and higher quality of information, e.g. delivery schedules
- No previous IT knowledge needed
Do you want to learn more about our
EDI OnePager?
How do I make an EDI connection?
Our EDI experts will not let you down during the EDI implementation phase. Together we analyse your EDI potential and create an individual migration plan based on your EDI requirements.
After implementation, we carry out a detailed test phase in which all your current and future partners are recorded. As soon as we have received your approval, we start integrating the accepted processes into the productive INPOSIA environment.
Are you interested in our EDI solution or have questions?
Get in touch with our EDI experts. We will gladly be of assistance. By phone, email or in person at your premises!
Jennifer Muriniti
INPOSIA EDI Specialist