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How does EDI Work?

• Gather the stored information and prepare an electronic document for the EDI document to be sent
• Use a third party managed EDI service or an in-house translator to translate the e-document into an EDI format based on the mapping guidelines provided by your trading partner(s)
• Setup communication via AS2, FTP or VAN and send your EDI document

Watch our CEO, explain in detail about how EDI process actually works.

Steps To Send EDI Documents

There are 3 major steps to the entire EDI process when you plan to send EDI documents to your trading partner(s)

• Prepare the documents to be sent: Create an electronic file of a document to be sent like an invoice, purchase order acknowledgement etc. by collecting and organizing the data from different sources where your data is stored whether it is your back office systems (ERP, CRM, WMS, ecommerce portal etc.) or an excel file.

• Document Translation: Feed your electronic data to a translator (it could be your in-house or translation services form an EDI provider) to convert it into an EDI format with data elements and segments based on the mapping guidelines specified by your trading partner(s). Trading partners use different data standards that you will need to comply with in order to successfully do business with them.

• Setup the communication and send your EDI documents to your Trading Partner(s): Once your documents are ready to be sent to your trading partner, establish a communication with them (based on their preferred method of communication) via AS2, FTP, VAN.

You are now ready to transmit your EDI documents to your trading partner(s).

Once your documents are received by your trading partners, they will respond with an appropriate document with the same method.