Tag: EDI in D365 F&O

4 consideration for selecting an EDI system

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has helped to standardized the way businesses are exchanging information with each other. But there are so many system integrators (SI) are working in the market with their own APIs that are pretty scalable and can support the ever evolving requirement of the business. On the other hand, EDI standards are taking time catch up with the business.

edi

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The most common EDI standards include:

  • ANSI ASC X12, or X12 for short, represents EDI standards for finance, transportation, supply chain, and insurance in North America
  • EDIFACT is a common standard outside of the U.S.
  • RosettaNet, based on XML, is used broadly in the supply chain, manufacturing, and services industries
  • GS1 EDI is used in retail globally
  • TRADACOMS or GS1 UK is dominant in retail in Great Britain
  • ODETTE is the standard used by the European automotive industry
  • HL7 required by HIPAA regulation is predominant in U.S. healthcare

So lack of standard of EDI makes it important to and a bit hard for the business to select an EDI system. Here are a 4 considerations and steps which you can follow while finalizing an EDI vendor and system.

Integration

  • Always ask for a real live demonstration of the system with the people in your team who know how EDI is supposed to work
  • Is the integration supported by the same company or it is outsourced to someone?
  • Is the integration tool standard solution or will be customized for you
  • Will it need customization in your ERP or there are native integration with that?
  • What is the upgrade plan for EDI system and how it responds to the regular updates on ERP
  • This system is only giving you some files and accepting files Or it gives you the whole package which takes care of all file transfers as well.
  • How the system integrates with other systems (using different protocols i.e. Odata endpoints, SOAP webservices, HTTPs, message queues etc.)

Technology

  • Can it be deployed to cloud/private cloud?
  • Can the solution be deployed on premise?
  • Check the scalability and support for multi-threading.
  • User friendliness of the system i.e. functional users or IT team will handle the exception and day to day operations

Cost of Ownership

  • How many staff required to manage EDI system?
  • Can you directly connect to your trading partner or you need to pay any middleware transactions fees?

Compliance

  • What are the T&C for support from the EDI provider if we make any change in the ERP? Does it go out of support?
  • Is there any flexibility of mapping the system on your own or you need permission from the EDI vendor always?