EDI is Alive and Well
Electronic data interchange (EDI) has been a viable and effective business to business integration solution for almost half a century. While this technology is considered to be very mature, EDI is still a great solution that is used by major companies across the world.
Along with technology enhancements such as Internet-enabled EDI and XML, EDI has kept pace with many business-to-business communication demands. If you want to work with the major players in your industry, you should be EDI-ready.
Is Your EDI System Up to Speed?
Regardless of whether you are new to EDI or have leveraged it for years, the pressures to keep costs low, the demands of multiple trading partners and the need to improve service quality require you to consider some important questions:
- How do you ensure that your systems can utilize EDI most efficiently and effectively?
- Do you have the ability to communicate in the appropriate standard for each of your trading partners?
- If you are already utilizing EDI, how can you improve service and gain a competitive advantage with your trading partners?
How are You Tackling these EDI Challenges?
Furthermore, you must consider how to overcome some of the major challenges associated with EDI that can prove costly to your organization. These include:
| Tedious trading partner onboarding processes | When onboarding a new EDI trading partner, the work involved can be very tedious. Many EDI translators require a great deal of data mapping and programming work in order to properly function. Often this requires technical development resources that can be expensive and divert time from more pressing projects. |
| Lack of data integrity | Data integrity is essential to success with EDI. A system that does not provide adequate checking and validation can result in faulty or missing EDI transactions. This can tie up EDI and business resources at your company and those of your trading partners. |
| Inadequate workflow processes | Adequate workflow capabilities—configurable to your specific needs—are needed to ensure that EDI transactions are routed appropriately and recorded efficiently at your company. Otherwise processing EDI transactions will involve a great deal of manual intervention. |
| Labor-intensive mapping | Creating EDI translation maps from scratch for all of your trading partners and their individual documents is labor-intensive and not an efficient use of resources. Instead of writing EDI translations from scratch, it is more efficient to leverage industry standard template documents and make slight modifications when needed. |
| Difficulty integrating with existing business systems | Integration is by far the most challenging part of any EDI implementation. Translation software is needed that can “plug in” to major enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or transactional databases without significant modification work to the source systems or to the EDI translator software. |
| Lack of scalability | As the volume of transactions increases, translation software systems must be scalable to support numerous trading partners and high volumes of data, or you risk losing important documents and transactions. |
| Insufficient EDI expertise and bandwidth in-house | Your IT resources may already be strained, or you don’t have the EDI expertise on staff. This may prevent you from optimizing your investment in any EDI solution. |
That’s where we come in. Oxford Consulting Group, in partnership with IBM, offers industry-leading products and consulting services designed to optimize your EDI capabilities and address these challenges.
Industry-Leading EDI Solution from IBM and Oxford
As an IBM Premier Partner with hundreds of successful EDI solution deployments over the last twelve years, Oxford Consulting Group provides the right blend of EDI software, services and support that helps you optimize your EDI solution deployment.
We have extensive experience with IBM® Sterling Gentran, one of the most widely-used and trusted EDI and data translation solutions for businesses and industries across the globe.
It is a high-performance e-business solution specifically designed to address the translation of inbound and outbound B2B files and messages. The benchmark for business-to-business commerce for over 30 years, IBM Sterling Gentran processes literally millions of transactions daily.
In partnership with IBM, we offer three different levels of Gentran solutions to address your specific business needs:
- IBM® Sterling Gentran:Basic® – a data translation and management system, designed for smaller business needs that allows you to easily communicate with your trading partners.
- IBM® Sterling Gentran:Director® – A simple electronic data interchange solution consisting of data translation, process control, and communication.
- IBM® Sterling Gentran:Server® – A high performance, versatile EDI solution and the premier product for the translation of inbound and outbound EDI files and messages.
While there are many EDI translation products available, the IBM Sterling Gentran EDI translation solution delivers numerous capabilities and benefits above and beyond other solutions.
Learn more about the key capabilities of IBM Sterling Gentran>>
And as a full service IBM reseller and services provider, we can deliver the Gentran solution from end-to-end, including:
- Assessing and determining your EDI translation requirements
- Procuring the Gentran EDI translator software
- Architecting and implementing the optimal EDI solution for your needs
- Streamlining solution implementation and enhancing your EDI capabilities with proven tools and frameworks
- Providing onshore EDI technical support and managed services
- Onboarding and supporting your trading partners
- And more
Learn more about our IBM Sterling Gentran consulting services>>
A Turnkey EDI Solution: “EDI in a Box” from Oxford Consulting Group
Unique to Oxford Consulting Group, we offer a turnkey solution that provides you all the right essentials— including the software, hardware, services and even financing—for a fast and cost-effective migration to IBM Sterling Gentran:Server.
It is designed to eliminate many of the challenges around migrating to a new solution, while providing the essential tools to help companies get the most from Gentran:Server.
Learn more about our “EDI in a Box” solution>>
For more information on IBM Sterling Gentran solutions, our EDI consulting services, and EDI in a Box, please contact us today. We look forward to assisting you with a successful EDI solution implementation
