1.Number of transactions.  Investigate the number of transactions your company will be performing on a daily basis.  Do you expect it to increase significantly over the course of the next couple years?  Select a solution that provides a monthly rate regardless of the number of transactions.  This will allow for easy budgeting when looking at EDI expenses for the upcoming fiscal year. 

2. Accounting Package. How many accounting packages does the EDI provider support?  Do they integrate with financial systems at all?  Make sure you select a provider that has plenty of experience integrating with different accounting packages – this ensures expertise and reuse of existing maps and connectors which will increase speed of implementation.

3. Scalability. Does the EDI provider integrate with other systems?  What about customer relationship management (CRM), eCommerce (Webstore fronts), supply chain management (SCM) systems?  Selecting a provider that supports all of these will allow you to focus on growing your business and eliminate the hassle of dealing with 2-3 separate integration providers.

4. Remote Access and SaaS. Can I access my EDI documents online?  Allowing for remote access has plenty of advantages and software as a service (SaaS) provides companies with a reduction in IT spend and resource allocation that are required for on premise solutions. 

5. Trading partners. Investigate to see if the EDI provider has already done EDI with your trading partners?  Having knowledge and experience with your trading partners EDI requirements will allow for swift implementation.  

Of course there are many more factors to consider when investigating an EDI solution for your business.  If you have any  comments, or would like to add other key issues - feel free to leave a comment on this blog post or call us at 1.800.755.6921 if you have specific inquires.

Thanks,

Dave Malda

Marketing Coordinator.

Article by Dave Malda

Dave is the Sales Manager and Marketing Coordinator at eBridge.

General EDI, Integration, The ePortal Web-based Transaction Engine, eBRIDGE Blog edi, implementation