When looking for a good EDI solution, one of the dependencies is to understand what your needs are for your business and trading partners. At a high level, a good EDI solution should be user friendly and intuitive, allowing a user to perform EDI tasks with little or no training.  A good EDI solution should also be relatively easy and quick to implement into production between your EDI trading partner(s) and ERP/accounting system.  Depending on the complexity of your EDI requirements you may require consulting services from your EDI software provider.

When choosing an EDI solution, it is key that you research all vendors thoroughly. There are many different product offerings in the market, all claiming to offer the best EDI solution. Remember, this is going to be a system that controls much of your communication with some of your most important customers or suppliers, it’s important that the EDI solutions are investigated well. Some of the items to research are:

·  Handling non-compliant documents - how do I handle incorrect documents?

·  Remote accessibility - is the solution web-based?

·  Easy partner management - can trading partners be added easily?

·  Is there VAN fees associated with moving documents or one monthly charge?

·  Accessible audit trail - is it easy to look up transactions and document trails?

·  Can I manually enter or reprocess orders?

·  What accounting packages does this solution integrate with?

·  Is this a system our business can grow with?  Do they integrate with customer relationship management (CRM), ecommerce (Webstore fronts), and supply chain management (SCM) systems?

·  Implementation time to production - How long will it take to implement this system?

These are just some of the items to look for when researching an EDI solution.  Do your best to understand what the EDI company and solution(s) offers and how will this solution help you grow and run your business more efficiently? 

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Regards, 

Dave Malda
Marketing Coordinator

Article by Dave Malda

Dave is the Sales Manager and Marketing Coordinator at eBridge.

General EDI, Integration, eBRIDGE Blog CRM, eCommerce, edi, Integration, SCM