An insight into EDI compliance

With the increasing use of EDI documents being exchanged between different business partners, the need for EDI compliance has become mandatory. In simple words, the EDI compliance can be described as the electronic exchange of business documents with your partner in such a way that your business partner can easily understand them.

It is therefore a mandatory requirement of a business partner to ensure that each document that is being exchanged adheres to a specific EDI format. This would guarantee the successful exchange of documents.

Nowadays, many business are giving a great deal of importance to making themselves EDI compliant. Several retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Fry’s Electronics encourage their vendors to be EDI compliant. This means that any business that is to be conducted requires EDI in order to receive your purchase orders and send out invoices.

Several guidelines are available to help you in becoming EDI compliant. The first step is to completely understand the specific requirements of your trading partner. You can either provide in house EDI solutions or even outsource your EDI requirements.

Generally, the entire process of developing an in-house EDI solution is an extremely hectic and expensive process. Once this process has been developed, you need to test your EDI solution in order to ensure that the documents can be successfully exchanged in the required format with your trading partner. Finally after the testing stage is complete, you are all set to exchange your documents with your partner.