The Benefits of EDI for eCommerce

From startups to international businesses, every company can benefit from selling products online. In today’s competitive yet convenience-focused marketplace, consumers may prefer to shop online rather than visit a store location. 

This makes eCommerce a flexible solution for buyers, and businesses can leverage Electronic Data Interchange to streamline operations and eliminate manual tasks. At DataTrans, we take pride in helping clients maximize their potential. Here’s a deep dive into EDI and how it can help your eCommerce business gain a competitive advantage. 

EDI is the secure, automated exchange of electronic documents between trading partners using a standardized format, which enables computer systems to communicate with each other. EDI documents can flow directly between businesses accelerating order processing, shipping, invoicing, and other essential supply chain processes. 

In recent years, a shift to digital shopping has taken place. With more people at home, the number of online consumers who have started using eCommerce to buy products they previously may have purchased in physical retail stores has increased. 

Selecting the right technology can make or break an eCommerce business. Supply chains can be complex, sometimes stretching across many partners in multiple countries, and shipments must reach the end-customers on time and in good condition. Moreover, shoppers want peace of mind knowing they can easily return items.  

Integrating an eCommerce EDI platform into your business is a seamless way to simplify these processes and allows for unlimited connectivity enabling you to maintain EDI compliance. Automating the exchange of information can achieve greater visibility, improve efficiency, and streamline workflows.

Further advantages Of EDI For eCommerce businesses include: 

• Better Operational Efficiency With EDI, messages are streamlined and automated. This boosts the speed and efficiency of your operations by eliminating the need to rekey data in multiple systems manually.
• Minimizes errors Doing away with manual, paper-based processes significantly reduces or eliminates the occurrence of human errors.
• Increased accuracy With automated message validation, errors are flagged and rectified before they are sent to your trading partners. This also helps maintain data integrity in your internal systems and all parties involved.
• Greater Visibility EDI for online purchases makes the ordering, tracking and invoicing process transparent to you, your trading partners, and the end-consumer. This transparent visibility enables all parties to make informed decisions, ultimately improving the service delivered.
• Supply Chain Optimization With EDI, you can see what’s in stock and where it is as well as what’s on the way and ETA for its destination. Unknowns associated with manual-entry processes are eliminated, enabling you to know what inventory you need to have on hand and order.
• Saves Money Integrating EDI into your eCommerce business scales back manual processes. Less reliance on paper documents provides an opportunity to cut costs, eliminates exchange inaccurate data, loss of information and simplifies fulfillment processes allowing companies to focus resources elsewhere while increasing efficiency.

Now that we have explained the benefits of EDI, how do you integrate eCommerce EDI software into your business? Well, it’s easy with help from the experts at DataTrans. 

EDI integration is created when trading partners establish an EDI workflow. Typically, it’s achieved through a three-step process. 

1. Establish the EDI documents, transactions, protocols, and endpoints used to exchange data with trading partners.
2. Connect to trading partners and perform the transmission. Options include connecting directly using AS2, SFTP and more, an EDI network provider using your preferred communications protocol, or a combination of both. The optimal communication method depends on the specific partner and the volume of transactions expected to be exchanged.
3. Convert EDI data into a format that can be used in your back-end technical environments, such as an accounting solution, shipping services platform, eCommerce marketplace or ERP system.

Online shopping is everywhere, and it’s becoming an ever-increasing way of life. Moving into the eCommerce space is too tempting to pass up, and a custom EDI solution is a great way to hit the ground running.

Make the jump with support from DataTrans, the industry’s leading provider of EDI solutions for eCommerce clients. We specialize in supporting your company’s needs with effective, easy to use, and affordable multichannel cloud-based EDI and eCommerce software solutions.

Contact us to learn more about EDI for B2B eCommerce.