With online shopping increasing every day, building a multi-channel eCommerce platform has become inevitable. Not just a robust and flexible platform lets you manage several brands but also lets you expand into new countries, simply from one platform.
Managing inventory is a tedious task for any retailer. Excessive stock can lead to dead stock-killing margins. Limited stock leads to stockouts, missed sales, and ultimately unhappy customers.
Andresen Consulting and the Coca-Cola retailing council conducted a study and found out that the average out-of-stock rate in a grocery store was 8.2%. Not just this, there were several studies conducted by groups at different times, such as Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA), and it was found that 8% were out-of-stock.
In order to manage stock a powerful and customizable eCommerce management system is a perfect solution.
Magento is one such platform powered with advanced AI capabilities that offers actionable data analysis and automates back-end workflows, on everything ranging from catalog updates, site content creation, product recommendations, and fulfillment, to customer targeting and personalization.
By choosing Magento EDI Integration, both suppliers and buyers can ensure better information flow, inventory management, reduced cost, accurate accounting, supply chain management, and order processing.
Companies can automate drop ship, enable omnichannel retailing, connect back-end systems like ERPs, and render the ability to meet a trading partner and industry requirements while eliminating the need for re-key order information. Magento Integration with EDI can also eliminate the data entry and process more orders in less time.
The reason why we are speaking about the EDI Magento Integration is to showcase that the EDI is more powerful and customizable than ever before. It is not the same rigid system that needs training and better knowledge of programming languages such as XML to implement and work on.
How EDI Progressed From Legacy to Advance?
EDI was introduced in the 1960s by Ed Guilbert. It was then a form of electronic communication between the shipment supply chains in the US army. Today’s biggest leaders in the market, like Volkwagen, Scania, and Walmart harness EDI for manual process removal, increased transaction security, lower operational costs, and faster, streamlined communications.
Strict standards are used for implementing and using EDI, which include GS1 EDI, VDA, ASC X12, EDIFACT, PEPPOL & many more.OFTP and AS2 are the most common communication protocols used both in point-to-point and WebEDI.
No doubt, EDI has made a huge difference in global supply chains by removing the manual processes before the inception of the internet. However, those implementing EDI for the first time seem to face issues, like slow and complex processes preventing the flexibility that EDI aims to provide.
Challenges with Legacy EDI Systems
The legacy EDI systems needed to be refined as they were complex, making it difficult for the companies to keep pace with the ever-changing market and business needs.
Conventional EDI systems can be difficult to navigate if you do not have the expertise to manage them across trading partners’ systems. It also requires manual or human intervention to reduce corrupted information formation in your siloed systems. Requisite training is required to implement, digitize complete data, and supply-chain wide rollout.
41% of the businesses reported having no EDI solutions due to their implementation challenges. Today’s companies need simple interfaces and easy-to-use cloud-based tools.
What’s Good About Cloud-based EDI?
Cloud-based EDI enables businesses to send, store, receive, and manage electronic trading information. Cloud-based tools are more cost-effective and enhance operational efficiency, boost end-to-end visibility capabilities and promote smoother collaboration. All in all, cloud-based EDI means lesser management, time, and cost investment.
A cloud-based EDI or a WebEDI renders a wide range of in-browser tools, which makes EDI more accessible. For instance, you can create web forms that enable you to input data directly into EDI systems regardless of a lack of technical expertise.
Cloud-based tools also make B2B integration easy, allowing you to instantly onboard new trading partners.
Benefits of CloudEDI tools –
- Companies with a lack of EDI expertise can implement and use it.
- A company with trading partners with limited to no EDI knowledge can operate EDI.
- Organizations who want to simplify their supply chain and EDI management can take advantage of cloud-based EDI.
- Businesses that want more flexibility and scalability must opt for cloud-based EDI.
Let’s get back to EDI integration with Magento. This integration takes out the complexity from automated business processes, those already using EDI.
Magento EDI Integration – Improving Business Efficiency
Magento platform is one of the robust eCommerce platforms powering commerce for brands of all sizes and industries. Magento is scalable & extensible, integrated with multi-channel and intelligent commerce to make complex trading simpler – from discovery to delivery.
As seen, EDI has progressed with time, becoming more flexible, automated, and customizable integration of third-party software is helping large organizations to smoothly operate their business.
EDI can help process large volumes of eCommerce every day efficiently while allowing you to expand your business easily. Many EDI services and solution providers offer EDI integration services to seamlessly integrate your eCommerce platform – Magento – at an affordable cost.
Typically EDI standards – 846 (inventory), 850 (purchase order), 810 (invoice), and 856 (advanced ship notice) can offer easy and easy handling of products supplied to trading partners, irrespective of their count and location.
An effective EDI Magento Integration can automatically collect customers’ orders and then send daily/hourly purchase orders to suppliers so you always keep your customers happy and content.
With these two systems, you can complete every piece of data that your supplier would need – amount, color, size, etc, making trading intuitive and easier.
Benefits of Magento Commerce EDI Integration
Integration of EDI with Magento Commerce enables –
- The automated back-end gives agility to e-trading with trading partners, 3PLs, and suppliers.
- Elimination of the manual integration process to make setup smooth.
- API-based webhooks support hassle-free transactions.
- Automatically updated inventory while directly sending invoices, purchase orders, & more to your partners.
Common to Advance Requirements Met with EDI Magento Integration
Sales Order – Cloud EDI Magento Integration lets automatic orders loaded from retailers or customers directly into Magento commerce via EDI.
Advanced Shipping Notifications – Automatically notify customers’ shipping when sales orders are marked completed.
Invoices – With Magento EDI integration, companies can send invoices transparently to customers or accounting packages.
Purchase Orders – Automatically entered purchase orders into Magento sent from suppliers through EDI solutions.
Inventory Balance – Seamless EDI Magento Integration makes inventory (from third-party logistics) available at any time within the Magento eCommerce platform.
Product Updates – Hassle-free and smooth new product listing into POS from Magento or vice-versa or accounting package.
Transport Orders – Have an EDI Magento Integration to complete a sales invoice by sending an automatic request for a pickup to the transport company when orders are ready to deliver.
How Does Magento EDI Solution Take Place?
The below steps show how Magento EDI Solution works to process an order for delivery.
- The first step is when a product is set up in Magento to sell them with inventory and complete price synchronization.
- Next, when a customer selects and places an order online, the order details are sent to the internal systems automatically.
- Further, a PO with GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number) and GLN (Global Location Number) is generated and sent to suppliers.
- The PO is acknowledged by the supplier and the order is prepared for the shipment with retailer branding.
- The supplier sends electronic dispatch advice known as ASN (Advance Shipment Notice) as soon as the product is dispatched.
- The EDI dispatch advice or ASN messages add the product to the warehouse stock level inclusive of its price.
- The SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) scan lets suppliers send invoices and track information automatically via EDI.
- The invoice is seamlessly updated in the Magento automatically, consisting of the GTIN number, corresponding prices, and other essential information related to the product.
In a Nutshell –
Organizations are striving to expand their business globally hence are integrating more and more software systems to streamline operations and manage them effortlessly. With modern and cloud-based electronic data interchange, global retailers, supply chain partners, and traders can seamlessly send and receive orders while offering a seamless customer experience.
Outsourcing EDI services can enable your current EDI system integration with Magento, which can accelerate your business process.
Magento EDI integration can automate order processes, simplify pricing, and offer flexibility and control over presentation, content, and functionality.
So, get rid of traditional manual processes while optimizing the supply chain management system for business scalability with Magento EDI Integration.
Author Bio
Scarlett works with the editorial team of A3logics, a leading company offering EDI Solutions. Exploring the latest technologies, reading about them, and writing her views have always been her passion. She seeks new opportunities to express her opinions, explore technological advancements, and document the details. You can always find her enjoying books or articles about varied topics or jotting down her ideas in a notebook.
