Demystifying EDI: An EDI Crash Course in Supply Chain Technology

You’ve been there before. You receive a question from one of your top trading partners about an EDI transaction from three months ago. Most likely, that information won’t be in your local archive so you’ve got to dig through an offsite one. You search through hundreds and hundreds of transactions. Aimlessly hoping that needle in the haystack will call out to you. Before you know it, you’ve wasted hours trying to track down this data when you could’ve been attending to important business matters.

Congrats! You’ve just been managed by your EDI.

It’s no secret that EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is an essential part of your business. However, it’s something that most consider a ‘means to an end.’

Many businesses simply “deal with” EDI and manage it as best they can, resigned to the fact that it’s not worth the time or resources to make it work for them. But what they don’t realize is just how critical it is to their supply chain management (SCM) and how it impacts the business, both long-term and on a day-to-day basis.

Customer relationship management, customer service management, order fulfillment, procurement, and returns are just some of the processes that are heavily dependent on EDI. Those processes are used to transfer of an extensive range of documents, including:

• Order acknowledgments
• Shipment notifications
• Invoices
• Remittance advice
• Price/sales catalogs

You exchange information and complete transactions with those documents listed above on a daily basis with your trading partners. They are all part of processes that are critical to the operation of your business and managing the flow of data, materials, and cash.

But what happens when there are missed payments or partner exceptions? How do you gain visibility into those issues? What about confirmation on sent and received documents (e.g. Functional Acknowledgments)? How quickly can you obtain that (if at all)?

What happens when a trading partner has a question about a purchase order? Do you just dig through piles and piles of data hoping you can spot that needle in the haystack?

All of these issues can turn into larger problems and set your business back if you don’t have a way to track them and respond in a timely manner.

EDI by itself is complex, but you shouldn’t have to stress about it or let it manage you. It’s the processes that impact your business that matter most.

With Syncrofy, you can take the complexity out of EDI and take back control over your data.

You can set up notifications to alert you when you haven’t received a payment or if you’ve forgotten to send an Advance Ship Notice back to one of your trading partners, helping you avoid those pesky chargebacks and fees.

You can quickly search for or filter through documents to find the information you need in a matter of seconds. Syncrofy’s dynamic dashboard and report-building features allow you to answer important business questions with a few clicks of the mouse.

You can even invite your partners to use Syncrofy so it’s easier to collaborate, solve issues, and answer questions together.

The bottom line is that Syncrofy helps you save time, gain insights, and achieve full visibility when it comes to your supply chain processes. That means saving your business money in the long run and streamlining communication between you and your trading partners.

To learn more about the power of Syncrofy and what it can do for your business, visit www.syncrofy.com.