• Follow a phased approach when migrating from TrueCommerce to Boomi in order to fix any initial hiccups
• When you follow each of the below migration best practices, you cannot go wrong on the implementation
• Switching from TrueCommerce to Boomi is a wise idea considering the advantages a robust platform like Boomi brings to the table.

Introduction

TrueCommerce as a Managed EDI Service

TrueCommerce is a managed EDI service company providing a cloud-based EDI software called Foundry and service to companies all sizes (especially mid and small tier companies). The company charges you a fixed fee for each trading partner setup as long as they have the trading partner connection. If not, they have to go through the mapping process and help setup your trading partners. As you start with TrueCommerce, you will have an implementation expert assigned to help you with setup and implementation who works with your EDI team. One thing to note though is that TrueCommerce provides limited support during and after implementation. This means that if there is an emergency with an error or a map change etc. and you have sent them an email, it takes 3-5 days for them to respond which may not be ideal every time. Our advice is to call them instead of emailing if you need an immediate resolution. Overall, it is a user-friendly platform that many businesses rely on. However, you need to evaluate what is it that you need in an EDI solution.

Boomi as an Integration Platform as a Service

A Complete EDI Solution when combined with EDI Support LLC services

Boomi stands out as 9x leader in Gartner Magic quadrant in the EDI space and offers broad cloud-based EDI capabilities including integration, EDI/B2B management, API management, Master Data Hub and Flow Workflow Automation. It is important to understand that Boomi provides the software and offers implementation service options through their third-party partners.  EDI Support LLC is one of the Boomi’s EDI implementation partners that helps companies by implementing Boomi EDI software if they are looking for a new EDI solution and migrating from legacy EDI infrastructure to Boomi at affordable costs. From trading partner on-boarding, end-to-end testing, going live with your trading partners and daily monitoring of your EDI documents, we take care of everything.

Why do companies switch from TrueCommerce to Boomi?

Many companies like to switch from TrueCommerce to other cloud based EDI software companies because of the lack of quality of service from TrueCommerce and take advantage of Boomi’s connector-based   licensing   model, effortless   integration   with   SaaS backend applications and frequent updates to the platform providing latest features.

EDI Support LLC’s Migration Approach and Best Practices

First, you need to have access to TrueCommerce Foundry platform which is a single unified platform to access trading partner configuration, mapping, transactions exchanged and applications connected.

1. Initial analysis to determine the list of trading partners to be migrated

Boomi pricing is based on features and number of connectors/trading partner connections.  It is important to know the number of trading partners to be migrated from TrueCommerce so that appropriate connector licenses can be purchased from Boomi to gain access to AtomSphere platform and setup runtime. The TC foundry platform “Trading Partners” portal provides details of the trading partners configured in TC. Also, the TC “Transactions” portal can be used to find out the partners who are actively exchanging documents.

2. Boomi licensing and runtime setup

After identifying the number of trading partners already running in TrueCommerce and the integrated applications, your EDI consulting partner needs to work with Boomi to set up the Boomi AtomSphere platform account with required number of connectors. Also, if there is an ERP integration involved, the best practice is to setup Boomi atom cloud which is a “zero-footprint” integration solution owned and maintained by Boomi. Now, you can configure two runtimes- Test and Prod atoms.

3. Configure Trading Partners in Boomi

The next step is to configure the Trading Partner Component in Boomi. The TC Foundry platform “Trading Partners” portal provides details of the Test/Prod EDI identifiers along with its qualifiers. It also houses all the partner specific translation cross references such as item catalog and other lookups. Using TrueCommerce as reference, the Boomi trading partner component can be configured for EDI Envelopes, delimiters, and FA requirements.

4. Review The Types of Documents Exchanged

The “Transactions” portal in TrueCommerce displays the inbound and outbound documents exchanged. The “Received” part of the transaction portal shows the inbound documents received from the trading partner whereas the “Sent” shows the outbound documents from the accounting system to the trading partner. The raw EDI can also be viewed/downloaded from “Transactions” portal. All the documents exchanged with the Trading Partner need to be identified using the transaction portal. The company we helped transacted EDI 850, 855, 856, 810, 870 and 846 with their retailers. One of the crucial steps in migration is to ensure that the EDI documents exactly match even after the EDI Platform is switched. This will ensure that the partners continue to process them without issues. A good number of sample documents need to be gathered and should be used for map build and end-to-end tests. At EDI Support LLC, we test with a minimum of to a maximum of 10 samples per document type depending on the complexity of the use cases.

5. Connection to ERP

The EDI documents are translated into ERP specific formats to be exported/imported. The customer we helped used NetSuite as their ERP and the EDI documents were translated into NS SOAP XML. The Boomi EDI integration processes has specific ERP connectors which can effortlessly connect with your ERP to get/send data.

6. Mapping

The TC foundry platform “Mapping Manager” houses all the maps built per partner. It shows the mapping between source and target formats and other data manipulations logic. TrueCommerce documentation helps in understanding the built-in functions and endpoint mapping. Using the TrueCommerce Maps as reference and the EDI samples, the Boomi maps are built as a next step.

7. Inbound Processing

The TC foundry platform receives all the Inbound 850, translates them into NS SOAP XML and processes them as a batch. At Boomi, the inbound processing is real-time when received via AS2. The orders are created immediately when processed in Boomi via AS2.

8. Outbound Processing

The TC foundry platform then needs to be scheduled to invoke a saved search to retrieve the outbound document numbers such Sales Order Nbr, Item Fulfillment Nbr and Invoice Nbr. The Platform has the ability to track document numbers and process them once.

At Boomi, it is possible to clone a similar saved search to retrieve the documents that are ready to go out and the outbound process will update a flag indicating that it is sent to trading partner after the document leaves the door. This flag ensures no documents are sent more than once.

9. End-To-End Testing

Once the maps are unit tested, end-to-end testing will be carried out using live samples downloaded from TrueCommerce. The Inbound documents will be sent to the AS2 listener using a Boomi test client and ensured Sales order is created successfully at NetSuite.

Similarly, the outbound process one each for 855, 810, 856 will be executed and the edi documents will be delivered to a mock AS2 listener. The generated EDI samples will be compared against the TC live samples and ensured they match exactly.

10. Go-Live

Our Go-live strategy is to migrate one partner at a time in a phased approach. The best practice is to migrate AS2 direct partners first followed by VAN/CommerceHub partners if any. For AS2, an initial connection test with the Boomi runtime is carried first before the full switch over. During cutover, the inbound documents can be sent by trading partner to Boomi endpoint whereas on the outbound side, the ERP saved search for TC will be modified to exclude the trading partner being migrated. TrueCommerce will continue to process other trading partners where the fully switched over trading partner will flow through Boomi. This approach needs to be repeated for all the trading partners until everything is migrated from TrueCommerce to Boomi.

EDI Support LLC Experience in Migration – Case Study

Hear from our Boomi expert, Alex James who explains our migration approach in detail with a case study of a luxury home brand that needed to migrate from TrueCommerce to Boomi:

Educate yourself and follow these steps to stay within your EDI budget and still trade with your trading partners effectively.