How can EDI bring you closer to customers

Businesses need systems offering quick cooperation and transparency, in order to make sure they can respond to their customers’ demands. EDI, in combination with modern interfaces such as APIs, allows cooperation between all participants in the supply chain, and offers transparent and streamlined operations and communications.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that integrated EDI features will help your business eliminate time-consuming, manual processes that are prone to human errors and lead to delays in production and delivery schedules. By automating the information flow throughout the supply chain, from orders to shipments and returns, you can meet the demands of your retailers and customers in real time, thus optimize your overall efficiency.

The entire information flow should be traceable in real time, allowing all parties involved to monitor the entire journey of a product until the order is actually fulfilled. This flow should be automated with the combined use of EDI and web services APIs, depending on the partner’s ability to respond.

One of the main issues that businesses face is data inconsistency, e.g. discrepancies in the number of shipped products. This usually means that customers are not satisfied and tend to feel frustrated and consider looking for other partners. Moreover, wholesalers and suppliers may need to return payments due to delayed deliveries, which of course has an impact on their profitability.

EDI offers comprehensive data management and supply chain automation, enabling wholesalers to communicate continuously and effectively with all parties involved, from the business to the end consumer. In its turn, this leads to better data, quicker processing, improved transparency, fewer errors and lower cost. Thanks to this automation, wholesalers have the required flexibility to send their products directly to the retailer’s store, without having to store them. During this process, inventory is continuously monitored and managed.

In the modern environment of e-commerce, real-time updates for order fulfilment are important for both retailer and consumer loyalty. Complete cooperation throughout the supply chain leads to streamlined operations, communications and transparency, eliminating the possibilities of miscommunication, ensuring accuracy, improving speed and enhancing business operations.

In reality, as retailers put pressure on their suppliers/partners to respond to their orders with even greater accuracy, so that they can -in their turn- meet the needs of the consumers, complete cooperation, execution and transparency of the supply chain based on EDI and APIs are more crucial than ever before, in order to have successful results.