EDI | B2BE's EDI network - Electronic Data Interchange

Connecting Unistrut to our global EDI network

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) making document management easy

If you’re looking to understand how to make electronic data interchange (EDI) simple and easier to manage while growing your EDI network B2BE’s cloud based EDI solutions will help get you there. B2BE is focused on making the journey stress free, simple and more dynamic than trading documents manually or using more traditional EDI networks.

B2BE’s solutions mean you connect once and can connect to many, no matter where they are in the world and which platform they trade on. Similarly, what document format they support or EDI protocol they want to use, B2BE manages all this for you so you can focus on your business and not the nuts and bolts of EDI.

EDI helping to solve

Multiple standards

Within each organisation, industry or country there are a multitude of standards used, or manipulation of standards, which means with each integration effort needs to be applied to manage what is received and needs to be sent electronically.

Business visibility

With each EDI connection the business looses a certain amount of visibility. Data is input and output by the system, managed by IT and business functions only get to see the failures which are harder to trace and manage.

On-boarding effort

Each new supplier or customer requires resourcing effort to on-board. What standards do they follow, which protocol do they use and once setup testing, and in some cases accreditation, needs to be managed adding time.

Infrastructure

With any IT solution many EDI solutions need specific infrastructure to manage the connectivity and mapping of documents if managed in-house. This means the infrastructure also needs to be replaced and upgraded throughout its lifetime.

Interoperability

While a supplier or customer may handle direct connections others use different EDI providers which means having different agreements or infrastructure to support this adding complexity and cost.

Retailer demand

Some retailers stipulate contractually as a supplier your organisation must trade electronically via EDI. Can this be supported and can it be completed before the contract starts adding complexity to new account acquisition. Particularly if you're starting from the ground up.

B2BE’s Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) workflow

Our Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solution allows for seamless document management automation. Providing translation, enrichment and validation for any document format and supporting any protocol.

Key features of B2BE's EDI solution

Enrichment and validation

B2BE understands that while a sender sends data they have available to them in their system a receiver may need different data to integrate the documents so enrichment of files can occur on the fly. Similarly data within the document can be validated to ensure the sender’s data will not simply create errors and more effort to rectify than if the document was sent manually.

Any format

The B2BE EDI network is an ‘any to any’ environment. All standards are supported similarly are any custom formats. In fact, B2BE believes why translate something to only translate it into something else. Translate on the fly based on what the sender can send and what the receiver needs.

Any protocol

All organisations have different capabilities or preferences when setting-up an EDI solution and how the data is sent is no different. At B2BE we can handle any protocol so connecting to your supplier, customers or third parties isn’t an issue. Or to your organisation for that matter. Whether it’s; FTP, HTTP/HTTPs, AS2, Web Services or an API B2BE has you covered.

Document workflow tools

While EDI document formats and protocols add a layer of complexity which B2BE can manage some EDI solutions need intervention, automatic or manual, to ensure data is parsed correctly. B2BE has a range of workflow solutions specifically designed to help manage EDI documents on their journey.

Managed solutions

Managing the technical aspects of an EDI solution can be tricky and also managing multiple on-boarding projects can get downright complicated. B2BE’s managed solution approach means we handle the technical and also on-boarding your customers or suppliers so you don’t need to.

Visibility tools

All EDI documents your organisation sends or receives are available either through the B2BE Customer Centre or your own branded Web Portal. This means you have full access to all the documents, the audit trails and input/output formats so it’s easy to follow a document or transaction set with multiple documents. You can even setup alerts to let you know when something occurs, or doesn’t.

Why EDI?

Automating documents could save your organisation over 95% in document processing costs.
Cloud based EDI minimises the number of staff involved in the management of an EDI solution and allowing them to focus on more value added activities.
Faster connection and on boarding of new trading partners, regardless of communication method, with B2BE’s cloud based EDI solutions means automation goals can be reached more quickly.

What you can achieve with B2BE's EDI solution

Simplification

EDI is supposed to improve efficiency and streamline. B2BE’s approach is we manage all the hard work for you and your organisation’s involvement becomes minimal so you don’t need to keep specialist resources on tap and IT can focus on more important activities and the business can then own the solution.

No touch automation

EDI is supposed to be seamless and fully automated. With B2BE’s cloud based EDI, managed approach and document management workflows, B2BE’s EDI solution means that there is minimal requirement to touch any document as it passes to or from your trading partners.

Minimise EDI knowledge

B2BE’s managed EDI solutions and general cloud approach to EDI means you don’t need to retain resources to simply manage an EDI solution. Or simply, a resources time can be focused on other value add areas of the organisation.

Connect once, connect to all

Connect once to B2BE and connect to the world. If one of your trading partners supports EDI and you wish to connect to them, no matter what the document set, B2BE can get you connected.

Scalable EDI in the cloud

B2BE’s EDI solutions are cloud based meaning B2BE can easily ramp up resources when there are increases in our client’s transactional volumes so you don’t need to worry about capacity.

Disaster recovery

As with all good systems B2BE runs a full disaster recovery environment so in the unlikely event or catastrophic failure occurs we can cut you over to our DR environment to ensure minimal down time.

EDI success stories

The Tayto Group after adopting B2BE’s EDI solution can now trade with all their customer’s, Europe wide and don’t need to manage the on-boarding process.

View case study