Improve Data Accuracy and Supply Chain Efficiency with an ERP and Built-In EDI

Do you want fewer miscommunications? Fewer data inaccuracies? Fewer manual processes? Adding electronic data interchange (EDI) can guarantee a more streamlined, error-free business.

Did you know that 80 to 90% of business-to-business traffic uses EDI? And this number keeps growing at about 3% to 5% annually. In this industry, EDI is no longer a want-to-have option—it’s a must-have.

Basically, EDI is the exchange of data between two business partners (or within an organization) in a standard digital format. EDI helps to ensure accuracy, efficiency and reliability.

When you manage all communications with EDI, your vendors and retailers don't have to dig through emails, notes, or spreadsheets to find pertinent data. All communications, timelines and order details are at their fingertips.

The global rise of ecommerce shopping means that the retail fulfillment landscape has shifted. Importers and distributors need to engage directly with retailers and consumers. Between direct-to-consumer (DTC) shipping, the explosion of ecommerce and sourcing/production changes, EDI is essential.

Consumer goods importers and distributors must fulfill innumerable orders. Using a consumer-goods-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution with built-in EDI ensures that your orders come in quickly, efficiently and error-free. An ERP solution also enables you to reduce costs. By improving data accuracy, supply chain efficiencies and ensuring retailer compliance, your business will see a rapid return on investment. Here’s why.

• Reduced costs – Labor is the most expensive—and the most important—variable cost in your organization. You cannot run a productive business without a productive workforce. What if your employees could focus on meaningful, productive tasks rather than manual data entry and validation? You save both time and money.

• Improved data accuracy – Human error disappears when you automate processes within a centralized system. By leveraging an ERP with built-in EDI capabilities, your data is accurate. In addition, having EDI tools integrated into your ERP means that there's no time delay like there is with manual entry. The data is in real time.

• Improved supply chain efficiency – The system validates the order, ensures the data is correct and translates it from the file into the fields within the ERP solution. The system then uses that data to ensure inventory is available to fulfill the order. Automatic validation is critical for efficient supply chain management, and an ERP with EDI processes and authenticates orders automatically.

• Ensured Retailer Compliance – EDI changes the game when it comes to compliance. EDI documents confirm specific information with your retailers, like inventory documents (EDI 846), purchase order acknowledgments (EDI 855), and requests for routing (EDI 753). EDI integration pulls the data from your system and sends it through an EDI translator to your trading partner. This guarantees that the data required for these imperative documents is correct, because the data you need is already stored and saved within your ERP solution.

Our Distribution ERP has all the tools you need to grow your business. With built-in EDI, your company automates order processing and invoicing systems. This automation reduces order cycle times, which in turn improves customer relations and communications. EDI eliminates human error, which reduces costs in all aspects of your business—from printing to excesses in inventory.

Overandback, an importer and distributor of tabletop housewares, has been an Aptean customer for nearly a decade. "EDI is vital to our business today," said Overandback CFO Glen Levitan. "Having it integrated into our ERP package is a big plus for us. To be able to seamlessly bring the orders in and process and send documents back to our customers is critical. From China to California and everywhere in between, we're all on the same database for sharing the same live, up-to-date data."

Changes in consumer shopping habits necessitate changes in back-end fulfillment processes. If you want to keep up with customer and consumer demand, you need the right tools. An ERP with built-in EDI is the technology you need to stay nimble and competitive in this ever-changing industry.

Ready to overcome your toughest challenges? Ready for superior supply-chain efficiency? Ready for greater data accuracy? Find out how, now.