Why You Should Consider Implementing an EDI Solution

Have manual processes caused a lull in the growth of your eCommerce store? Are you looking for a way to scale your business? If you have answered yes to these questions, implementing EDI could be exactly what you need to rejuvenate your business. For those of you who are unfamiliar, EDI stands for electronic data interchange and is the structured transmission of data between organizations via electronic means.

With an EDI solution, end-to-end integrations enable the following benefits including integrating with vendors, no data entry, drop ship automation and incredible cost savings.

Your EDI provider will map and test to perform an integration with your trading partners. Once integrated, you can automatically send out purchase orders and receive purchase order acknowledgements, advance shipment notices, and invoices.

Once you are integrated with your suppliers/vendors, all order documents flow automatically from one system to another. As a result, there is no need to rekey information.

EDI automates the drop ship process. If you are drop shipping and offer the same product from multiple suppliers, your provider can source the order to the lowest cost provider or the warehouse that is closer to the customer to cut down on shipping. In addition, all documents are automated and will send instantaneously so your store can operate in real time and you will never have to worry about selling out-of-stock inventory.

When you elect to use EDI, expenses associated with paper, printing, reproduction, storage, filing, postage and document retrieval are all reduced or eliminated lowering your transaction costs by at least 35%. On average, the cost of processing an order manually is estimated to be $38 compared to just $1.35 for an order processed using EDI.

These are the major benefits that retailers will experience from implementing EDI. Other benefits include operating a green business by eliminating paper, increasing efficiency, and freeing up your internal resources.