Beware the "cheap" option!

A natural tendency, when asked by a customer to trade via EDI, is to put off the dreaded day for as long as possible. It is apparent that cost is involved. Who is to say that the customer will stick with you after you have spent the money to implement EDI? No wonder folks do their best to avoid it all and no wonder customers find it takes much longer than was hoped for to persuade the suppliers to trade electronically.

About the cheapest way for a customer to get correctly formatted electronic documents into their ERP system is to only have one set of integration links out to one system. To this end, cheap and freely available web technology is used to create an application that all the suppliers not taking up EDI are forced to use. Such tools are often dressed up in trendy jargon such as, “web pickup” or “zero integration”.

If you hold back on the EDI implementation you may be told to visit this “website” to find your orders, then create order acknowledgements, then despatch advices (or Advanced Shipping Notes, ASNs), and then perhaps your invoices, unless there are no invoices allowed and you have instead to find your remittance advices as part of the customer's self billing process. It seems great for the customer as all the documents to and from the website are already mapped to suit their systems.

In fact it is not all that great for the customer and it is certainly not great for you...

Your staff are expected to type it all again into your systems or copy type it into the “website”!

• Your work is doubled.
• Your risks from human error are doubled.
• Your costs go up.
• Your profits fall.
• Your prices need to go up...
• You become less competitive!

In truth that second bullet point is as deadly to your customer as it is to you. It leads to increased costs for your customer every time they get into the paper chases and escalations that always result during any remedial activities.

What to do?

Well don’t run a mile when you get asked to trade via EDI. Get the EDI integrated with your system so it runs automatically. Use a service that shines forth with efficiency and prompt attention for your customer. Stand out from the crowd and you will have a good chance of avoiding a dictated “solution” that may save you the price of a proper EDI implementation but will cost you much more in extra work and inevitable human error.