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01 What is EDI

Electronic data interchange (EDI) is a computer-to-computer exchange of business documents in a standard digital format.

The main goal is the business process automation, that leads to:
  1. cost reduction,
  2. increased productivity,
  3. increased reliability.
Read more:
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_data_interchange
  2. https://docura.net/edi-alused/?lang=en

02 The Benefits of EDI

With a fully integrated EDI system, the exchange process involves no paper, no emails, no people, and almost no time. The benefits that businesses across all industries derive from using EDI are the following:

  1. Cost savings – EDI reduces the costs of personnel, supplies, and office and storage space.
  2. Partner requirements – many companies will no longer do business with you if you can’t do business electronically.
  3. Speed and accuracy – having no people involved speeds up the processing
  4. Business process standardization

At the end EDI helps to increase your business efficiency.

03 EDI components

  1. Computer to computer. EDI is intended to replace the manual input of data into web forms and emails. While email is also an electronic method, documents exchanged via email must still be handled by people rather than computers, while the main goal of EDI is to fully automate business exchange. Using an ERP or Web EDI is required.
  2. Business process to automate and workflow. What business process and how we want to automate.
    1. Purchase
    2. Sales
    3. Logistics
    4. Finance/Accounting
    5. E-commerce (sales and purchase)
    6. etc
  3. Document types. Set of business documents to exchange, according to selected business process (purchase, sales etc). The most common documents are: orders and invoices (both purchase and sales). But there are many others: purchase order confirmation, shipment order, financial statement, payment order etc. See chapter 03 – Business process and document types.
  4. Transmission channels. EDI can be transmitted using any methodology agreed to by the sender and recipient, but Internet is most common. Standardized protocols are (see chapter 04 – Transmission and communication channels for more):
    1. API, REST-API, SOAP, ODATA (and other standards using HTTP protocol)
    2. Custom built POST, GET
    3. FTP, SFTP and FTPS
    4. Email (SMTP)
    5. AS2
    6. Local files exchange agent (Docudrive)
  5. Document formats. As EDI documents are processed by computers, a standard format must be used so that computers could explicitly “understand” the documents. Examples of document standards (see chapter 05 – Document formats for more):
    1. EDIFACT
    2. X12
    3. CSV/TXT (with separator, fixed length)
    4. Peppol BIS
    5. ISO 20022 for banking transactions
    6. Docura native XML (Docura-Documents)
    7. Various XML and JSON formats
    8. Machine printed PDF (recognition)
  6. Prepared integration packages. There are a lot of pre-built and ready to use integration packages for most common business processes (purchase, sales, logistics, finance/accounting), with various ERPS (see the full list in chapter 06 – Prepared integration packages and ERPs), including:
    1. 1C
    2. Erply
    3. Odoo
    4. Dynamics 365 Business Central
    5. etc
  7. Onboarding and mass connection (see chapter 07 – Onboarding and mass connection)
    1. Documentation / email templates
    2. Contacts management (calls, emails, meetings)
    3. Project management
    4. Setup and development
    5. Support
  8. Web EDI. Although considered not to be true EDI, Web portal can help (see chapter 08 – EDI-Web and email notifications):
    1. Onboard business partners fast (specially small ones)
    2. View and create business documents online
    3. Send and receive requests to/from business partners
    4. Upload/download documents files
    5. Setup email notifications
    6. Manage internal codes, business partners and addresses (Partners_codes_and_GLNs)
    7. Manage product and price catalogues
    8. Good example is Docu-Order for Valio Eesti AS (https://www.valio.ee). Valio setup product and price catalog used by Horeca (about 100 purchase points) to place an order for dairy products
    9. Online chat with Docura support

04 Docura value offer

Docura (https://docura.net) is the best self service and cost effective internet based solution. We can automate any business processes and connect any partner. Examples of business process and sectors to automate:
  1. Retail
    1. Retailers
    2. Suppliers
  2. Purchase
    1. Buyers
    2. Manufacturers/Sellers
    3. Horeca
  3. Logistics
    1. 3PL providers: Incoming, Outgoing
    2. Transport organizations: paperless logistics
  4. Financial
    1. E-invoices (chapter 10 – E-Invoice)
    2. Financial statements from banks (chapter 12 – Docu-Bank)
    3. Payment orders (chapter 12 – Docu-Bank)
  5. E-commerce
    1. Selling on market places
    2. Purchasing from warehouses, automated stock and assortment information
    3. Docura B2B ordering portal
    4. Docu-PIM (chapter 11 – Docu-PIM masterdata)

Ask Docura specialists () how to automate selected business process and fulfill your business partner requirements.

05 What is next

Sign up at https://app.docura.net, fill the primary data, connect your ERP, find and send requests to your partners!
You can always ask assistance at our live chat at the right bottom corner of the site!