EDI is an open data standard / technology. No different than physical mail, EDI is a digital mail standard that businesses use. You do not need to use a specific EDI Vendor to do EDI with your Customers.
All of these are Communication Protocols for how you send and receive EDI Files (like an inbox / outbox). An experienced EDI Vendor provides Communication services and can support any protocol. Your Retail Customer will either dictate a specific protocol or provide you the flexibility to use any one you want.
Edisoft has integrated to over 100+ ERPs in its 29-year history. We can integrate to on-premise or cloud ERPs whether they use API, file Import/Export or the database to receive and share data. If we have not seen your ERP before, it takes us 30 days to build a new integration that supports all of our Operations.
Be wary of marketing language that talks about pre-built connectors to your ERP. Your company, customer, inventory and other data is unique to you. No one can make a pre-built connector that takes into account end-to-end workflows and all of your unique data. These connectors simply pre-build a template, as an example, for posting orders - you still have to map specific data fields and configure custom rules to make it work for you. What’s worse, that pre-built connector only works for a single customer or specific application and is not reusable or linked to subsequent workflows in your order lifecycle.
It is important to understand what that connection will do. These connections are designed to give you the EDI Data, but they do not link your workflows end-to-end. If you are sending EDI Documents back to your Retailers and getting errors, most of the time it is because data is missing, not because it is wrong. That is because these EDI ‘Connections’ do not link data for related documents end-to-end. Edisoft’s Digital Operations store and share data amongst themselves so you don’t have to add unnecessary data to your ERP and you get end-to-end automation.
The simple answer is No. Integration is just sharing of data like an EDI order coming into your ERP. To complete that process, you need to confirm all the header and line item details so you can send your customer an order acknowledgement and your Warehouse a pick order. That takes work, like validation and inventory allocation where you are likely editing details for every order in your ERP. Integration does not mean those actions will be performed for you which is why we built Digital Operations that do both integration and automation.
You can, if it comes prebuilt with those actions. Most ERPs are tools. They have places for your order, inventory, customer data and more, but they are tools you need to customize if you are scaling and need software to do more for you. Once you start taking into account all your customers different rules this becomes a daunting task. Not only that, you will be customizing your ERP which will make integration, maintenance and changes far more complex to manage. That is why we address automation in our Digital Operations out-of-the-box to augment your ERP without needing to customize it.
The ERP is a Hub for your company, inventory, customer and vendor data. ERPs are not designed to be integration hubs. Everytime you integrate a customer order or invoice directly to the ERP you are creating a new integration point dedicated to that customer document or app exchange. If you have 5 Customers and you Receive Orders and send Shipment Notices and Invoices to each of them - that is 15 unique integration points that need to be set up and maintained to your ERP - and that does not include automation. Our Digital Operations turn those 15 integration points into 3 integration points to your ERP (Order, Shipment Notices, Invoices) and we give you automation workflows so you get more than just data sharing. This makes your integrations lean, scalable and flexible