In a decentralized and global scenario, exports and imports have intensified sales and growth for a plethora of companies. The business world runs on products and services conceived outside of their territory.
With the development of communications and logistics, a product produced in a business ecosystem can trigger disruption across others. Therefore, any outsourcing strategy must be intertwined with a comprehensive plan involving the supply chain and logistics phase. Essential operations such as stock management, invoice payments or order processing, shipping to suppliers, and more suddenly become easier thanks to modern EDI.
For companies dealing with consumer goods such as foods or medicines, the temperature control factor is an element that amplifies the demand of the supply chains and logistics. The proper temperature must be maintained across myriad supply chains until the products arrive at the point of sale. Any disruption in the cold chain would harm the product, triggering losses and in the worst case, posing a risk to the consumer’s health.
There is a multitude of determining factors in the logistics operations that can introduce real hurdles should an organization fail to scheme out a successful plan and have access to technology to accomplish goals:
- Faster onboarding and integrating complex bidirectional data feeds (in multiple formats) without burdening IT teams.
- Complete synchronization between manufacturer as well as distributor.
- Transparent communication and full coordination between all the ecosystem entities including, manufacturer, transport, distributor, customs, storage, and more.
- Merchandise and thermal traceability.
Modern EDI for Effective Communication
The chances of success in the transport industry increase when it achieves safe, immediate, and efficient communication not only in terms of physical communications but also data that propitiate alignment of every aspect of all the links of the supply chain.
EDI technology can help companies streamline transactions and create transparent communication channels across supply chains. It makes the relations between various entities more efficient and quicker. By allowing electronic data exchange, users can facilitate the sending and receiving of multiple documents in a safe, fast, and easy manner. It integrates the information in a unified database, where it can be stored and analyzed for successful business decision-making.
The more regularly this technology is used, the more controlled the process will be. An export and import company must work with EDI solutions, as their ability to do business with their partner ecosystem easily will increase. EDI is necessary overseas for logistics operators that must manage shipping reports, customs, and more.
However, companies working with legacy EDI solutions fail to do that. A lot of effort and time gets into executing EDI mapping and custom coding which, in turn, puts a lot of burden on IT and developers. Long hours of coding increase overhead costs. Plus, due to the need for manual intervention, accuracy gets compromised.
In such cases, there is a need to revamp the existing EDI approach and use it to transform companies’ ability to do business with trading partners and customers.
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Modern EDI integration solutions use a self-service approach to enable non-technical users to create connections across supply chains – securely and quickly. Meanwhile, IT teams can take out time to focus on more high-value tasks to drive innovation. With AI mapping functionalities, business users can map data from sources to target fields in no time. Thus, the need for custom coding gets eliminated. And other features such as pre-built application connectors, shared templates, intuitive screens and dashboards can monitor and manage large streams of time and use the insights to make decisions.
By automating the processes, these modern EDI solutions can help organizations minimize errors and facilitate better transactions, driving growth and agility. It’s time you take your business forward with these superior integration technologies.