Over the past twenty years EDI, has moved from a requirement for only the largest corporations to a more mainstream part of even smaller companies’ supply chains. As we move forward, EDI is gaining momentum, and may likely become a real requirement for most business-to-business transactions in the near future. Understanding and successfully implementing EDI is complicated and can be very expensive.

With any real EDI transactional volume, manual processing of EDI documents quickly becomes unmanageable. Many trading partners assess steep fines for inaccurate data, and shipping labels (like UCC-128) and other detailed ASN or Invoice documents have many detailed data points that can easily have transposed or mis-keyed data. It is easy for users to cross link transactions in the ERP/Shipping systems with the EDI transmissions, and the resulting fines erode or eliminate any gross margin on the transaction. Automation of document creation and transmission saves time and effort, eliminates transposition and data entry errors, and vastly reduces fines for mistakes and timing issues.

Xcellerated Solutions can help with the selection, design, implementation, and integration of an automated EDI system that can optimize (reduce) your costs and increase your accuracy through:

• EDI manual data entry is usual redundant–there are very few situations where all the data required to populate the required EDI fields cannot be found in a modern ERP system. Even abstract data pieces like tracking and PRO information can (and should be) available from the shipping, order management, and inventory systems without users having to type them in repeatedly in the EDI capture point. When data-entry mistakes are eliminated, fines (and research time and hassle) are naturally and automatically reduced (and often completely eliminated.)
• When attempting to run EDI systems manually, a tipping point will come where the chaos of reality exceeds the capacity of your team…
• Xcellerated Solutions can help you implement an EDI strategy, design, and roll-out that will see immediate results in any fines or mistake resolution time. Employees that were overrun with tedious busy work can instead work proactively toward process improvement, customer satisfaction, and increased profits.

• When the people on your front line are capturing transactions, you typically only want them to have to do activities that help them do their job more efficiently. This usually means eliminating data entry–if your shipping station has the ability to generate all the appropriate paperwork on demand (make it even easier using barcodes!), a user’s only possible mistake point becomes the selection of the appropriate shipment.
• When attempting to run EDI systems manually, a tipping point will come where the chaos of reality exceeds the capacity of your team…
• Xcellerated Solutions can assist with connecting and automating all aspects of your order management processing system–from Website/CRM/Order Entry through Inventory Management and Logistics through EDI document transmissions and receipts. We know why automation is important, and provide strong guidance and implementation of EDI deployment projects.

• EDI manual data entry is usual redundant, time consuming, and creates extra work when problems happen. There are very few situations where all the data required to populate the required EDI fields cannot be found in a modern ERP system. With a little extra time put into building bridges with ERP and transaction systems, many companies have eliminated whole teams of data entry ninjas and retasked them as process management specialists. Quality of life and trading partner relations improve dramatically.
• When attempting to run EDI systems manually, a tipping point will come where the chaos of reality exceeds the capacity of your team…
• Xcellerated Solutions can help with integrations of any of your home-grown or package business systems into an EDI processing engine that becomes a stable, reliable part of your business ecosystem. We’ve had over 20 years of experience and exposure to many clients who have enjoyed the benefits of automation.

• People take lunch breaks that they don’t come back from (for lots of reasons). Modern humans have biological needs and health problems. Disruptions occur. Weekends happen. Social media subscribers get distracted. When manual intervention is required to complete data entry for a transaction, your biggest bottleneck is usually the human variable. Automation allows control over timing of document transmissions. Key transmissions may be real-time, scheduled, or queued for review–these transmissions can even be conditionally applied based on rules (orders over a certain size or from a certain customer may be queued for review, while all other orders may automatically transmit an ASN in real time when the tracking number is generated.)
• When attempting to run EDI systems manually, a tipping point will come where the chaos of reality exceeds the capacity of your team…
• Xcellerated Solutions knows not only how to leverage rule-based scheduling, but also how to trigger real-time transmissions and other creative solutions. Our deep experience with WMS, shipping aggregators, and ERP systems give us unique capabilities to quickly implement automatic EDI solutions.

• Regardless of your level of automation in EDI data capture and document transmission, questions and problems will arise from internal and external parties. Often these problems are not sourced by your organization, but having good data history and audit trails in a highly-usable reporting format can remove 95+% of the time required to research and provide documentation for investigations.
• When attempting to run EDI systems manually, a tipping point will come where the chaos of reality exceeds the capacity of your team…
• Xcellerated Solutions can assist with developing reports that use dashboards (BI), Excel, web-based queries, or even text messaging to provide the right kinds of information to the appropriate parties at the right time.