The Seven Steps to a Successful EDI Deployment

Deploying EDI is demanding in terms of both technology and organisation. Even though outsourcing can shorten the process of deploying your new EDI system, to guarantee success, it’s always important to keep the whole project’s complexity in mind. We’ve summarised the EDI deployment process for you into seven simple steps.

1.  Determine your requirements

Right at the start, specify precisely what you need from your EDI solution. It’s also important to verify whether your ERP will be able to process data for automotive, that is, for example, to react to call-offs, generate ASNs and handle “self-billing”. Although some EDI suppliers already have solutions pre-configured for the majority of automakers, you’ll still need to check all the things that your EDI must be ready for.

• What processes have to be covered? Orders, ASNs, invoicing? What else?
• Will you only be needing to send out data, or will you only be needing to receive it – or both at once?
• How many partners will you need to involve?
• Will you be needing to integrate EDI with other systems at your company? Which ones?
• Do your customers demand certain standards or protocols? EDIFACT, VDA, ANSI X12, and then out of the protocols, there’s OFTP/2, AS2, X.400, SFTP, RosettaNet and more…

2.  Choose a team

Only a well-assembled team can truly help you to handle your EDI implementation. Clarify what internal staff can be assigned to the project and what, meanwhile, you’ll be asking of any external supplier. Divide up roles and clearly define who has decision-making power. If you want to keep the team size minimal, look to the next point – outsourcing.

3.  Choose a method (on-premise vs. outsourcing)

You’ll need to decide immediately whether to manage EDI via your internal servers or outsource it; this is a key decision. Each of the two methods has its advantages and disadvantages, but deploying EDI as a service is definitely becoming a more and more reasonable and efficient option.

 4.  Choose a partner

As we’ve noted above, EDI is among a company’s key processes. It’s thus extremely important to have a partner who can help you and is available to you not only at the beginning, when you’re deploying your new solution, but also after it has been launched. Focus on these main points while making your choice:

• What sort of experience does the supplier have? Are they active in your sector?
• Does this partner have their own solution, or are they implementing another company’s software?
• Are they able to integrate EDI with other systems?
• How are system updates handled?
• How does this partner react to new requirements by automakers and to project expansions?
• What’s the pricing structure for the solution they offer?

5.  Integrate it into your IT environment

Deploying EDI is pointless if you don’t integrate it with your IS. That’s the only way to eliminate errors and prevent needless manual copying. It will also ensure the smooth and automated transfer of information and smooth transitions for any changes in customer requirements that your production process must react to.

6.  Develop maps (or leave that to experts)

To make sure that communication goes smoothly, you’ll need to map individual documents and the items within them. That’s because every system and customer can have a different message structure. Mapping will ensure that the same items are being read into individual messages and systems in the same, correct places. Developing maps is usually work for special teams that have experience with this process. Expert knowledge by your EDI solution supplier is irreplaceable here.

7.  Test… and then launch

The last step is testing – ideally on real-world data. In this phase, you may still uncover some minor errors that didn’t become visible during configuration and programming. Testing the system before its final launch is another guarantee that no complications will appear during live operation.  Once you’ve seen all of these tests run as expected, all that’s left is launch the system and begin taking full advantage of automated data exchange within your supplier/customer chain.