What is the day of an order manager like? A series of calls, faxes, e-mails that need to be received, recorded, processed, cleared up ambiguities, compared with the database, cleared up all the inaccuracies that arose on yesterday's and the day before yesterday's orders, and so every day!
Fortunately, today technology allows this work to be given to electronics, leaving a person to do what distinguishes his computer — to comprehend the situation and make decisions, and not perform routine operations.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is a technology for electronic data interchange.
Most often, in the context of EDI, data is understood as primary commercial documents, such as Orders, Invoices, Invoices, Goods Acceptance Certificates, etc.
Electronic data interchange and electronic data interchange technology are two different things.
Rules in EDI technology:
Unity of data formats.
In order for the document to be unambiguously understood by both the buyer and the seller, it must be unified. Common formats have been developed for more than 50 types of documents. In Russia, these are messages developed by the ECR-Rus organization based on the international UN EDIFACT UN / EDIFACT D.01B standard and the current guidelines for electronic data interchange of the international association EAN.UCC (GS1) - EANCOM 2002 S3 (version 3).
Global identification of market participants.
Numbers (they are called GLN, that is, "Global Location Number") are assigned to all market participants and their divisions by the international organization GS1.
Global product identification.
These numbers are called GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) and are also assigned by the GS1 organization. Look at almost any item you bought at the supermarket the other day, it most likely has a 13-digit barcode on it. This is the GTIN.
Unity of data transfer protocols.
This rule is rather advisory in nature, and any EDI provider supports several protocols. Typically this is FTP, AS2 or SOAP over HTTP(S).
Why do we need EDI providers?
Organization of the process and quick connection of the client.
Imagine a supplier who needs to connect to three customers - without a provider, you need to establish a transport channel for data transmission with each one, set up document processing and conduct testing. If there is an EDI provider, the provider only needs to connect to the provider. All other settings and checks will be done by the provider itself.
The path of the document is visible to each participant.
An EDI provider can always say for sure whether a document has been transferred through its system and at what stage of approval it is now.
Technical support.
The EDI provider has specially trained people who are familiar with the data formats and customer accounting systems and solve technical issues quickly and accurately.
Data center.
If you do not have a data center capable of receiving and sending documents 24/7, then the provider's server is guaranteed to receive and store the document for you, and you can receive documents from the provider's server at any time.
So, you have a lot of counterparties, or you are tired of coordinating trading operations, or the counterparty calls for switching to EDI — Business culture will help. Call +7 (495) 12-88-901, +7(3412) 901-907 or write to office@businessculture.ru
