EDI is the electronic exchange of business documents in a standard format. Used by businesses to see exactly where their documents are in the supply chain process, if they’ve been correctly sent, received, it helps keep on track the handling of documents within a business, especially if there are thousands to track every year. In spite of evident advantages of EDI, it can result in both positive and negative effects for businesses. Today, our poll results breaks down the biggest challenges organisations have had with EDI.
Poll results
In our most recent LinkedIn poll, we asked our social media followers what they thought the biggest EDI challenge was for their organisation.
EDI challenges: what we found
Implementation times
45% of respondents selected implementation times as their biggest EDI challenge making it the highest ranked EDI challenge.
Implementing EDI allows companies to handle business transactions with any trading partner using a standardized electronic format. The time of implementing EDI depends on the approach the business takes – in-house or working with a third-party EDI provider. With any approach the business will need to learn how the system works and when working with a third-party partner the organisation can often have a road-map to understand implementation times. As technology changes and consumers become more used to immediate technology this isn’t the case with EDI.
Compatibility with partners
36% of respondents selected compatibility with partners as their biggest challenge with EDI.
Business isn’t as straightforward as it once was, trade is now globalised which means organisations have many partners, suppliers, manufacturers, and so on. This means that organisations need to connect electronically with all these stakeholders and connect to their systems. It can also be the case that the organisation may also face challenges with some of the partners that lack awareness of the benefits of EDI and therefore they are concerned about data sharing.
Growing volumes
9% of respondents have the biggest challenge of growing volumes for EDI.
More trade and more partners will equal with a growing volume of data that the organisation generates and information that you need to share with the ecosystem. The business needs to understand how to connect with certain systems, how to improve the quality of the data, how secure it is to share data with stakeholders, and whether the resources are available to handle all EDI related tasks in-house.
High costs
Finally, 9% of respondents selected high costs as the biggest EDI challenge they have with EDI.
Owning software and hardware for EDI transactions requires substantial costs. In-house maintenance and a dedicated, knowledgeable IT team to fix any issues the system has is needed. With growing volumes of data and data quality, this also results in additional costs. Quite often small organisations host EDI internally to save on external costs but it can often end up costing them a lot. To reduce costs organisations can look for alternative solutions for handling the EDI transactions, such as an external partner.
Meer informatie
B2BE's ervaring in de toeleveringsketensector stelt onze klanten in staat met succes te bouwen, uit te breiden en zich aan te passen, waardoor een grotere effectiviteit mogelijk is. Om in contact te komen met B2BE en feedback te geven over wat voor u en uw bedrijf het belangrijkst is, kunt u het volgende doen volg ons op LinkedIn en via sociale media. U kunt ook Stem in onze laatste LinkedIn poll. Als u uw supply chain-strategie wilt bespreken, contact opnemen met ons.