TrueCommerce vs. Orderful

Because EDI is a complex technical tool we understand that many organisations struggle to know what to look for when profiling a potential EDI partner. To help out, we’ve put together an essential list of criteria that businesses need to consider before choosing an EDI provider.

Although moving to a new EDI provider might sound daunting, if your current EDI provider is underperforming, then failing to explore alternative providers could be just as damaging. An EDI system that is well designed, secure and reliable, built on sound infrastructure, with a knowledgeable, proactive support team, can deliver substantial cost savings, business benefits and opportunities for organisations at every stage of development and maturity.

The challenge for many businesses is identifying the EDI provider with the blend of technical, commercial and project management expertise that can deliver the EDI platform that can bring those opportunities to fruition.

Take a look at this checklist below. If your current EDI provider is not delivering on any one of these performance areas, then it is time to look for a new EDI provider.

Checklist: Reasons to Change Your EDI Provider
Missed growth targets due to the inability to scale properly.
Loss of customers because of an inability to handle their required capabilities.
Inability to meet ERP or trading partner project deadlines, resulting in delayed payments.
Slow and complex supply chain systems causing monetary losses and wasted efforts on fixes.
Using multiple EDI providers leading to increased costs.
Increased costs from trading partners, such as chargebacks.
Inability to accommodate current or future trading partners, leading to loss of potential revenue.
Manual and resource-intensive processes making the supply chain inefficient and error-prone.
Lack of visibility across the supply chain.
Dependence on multiple disparate systems, increasing overall costs.
Dependency on employee legacy knowledge risking data integrity and potential data loss.
Competitive disadvantage due to current EDI solutions, negatively impacting brand reputation.
Inability to move quickly, affecting mergers and acquisitions or scalability efforts.
By addressing these points, businesses can evaluate whether their current EDI provider meets their needs or if a change is necessary to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and support growth.

To get started with EDI, you need to do some preparatory work and consider key factors:

Define Your Needs

The initial step is to define the types of EDI documents you need to exchange and understand the requirements of your trading partners.

Choose an EDI Provider

Do some research to find an EDI provider that matches the needs of your business.
If you would like to know more about EDI, and what you should look for when choosing the best EDI provider for your business, you can read our EDI Buyer’s Guide here: https://www.truecommerce.com/uk-en/resource/edi-buyers-guide/

Integrate With Your Systems

Determine which systems you would like to integrate with, such as your ERP system, accounting system, and/or 3PL warehouse.

Set up Trading Partner Connections

Connect your systems with your trading partners’ systems, such as your customers and suppliers, 3PL.

Conduct Testing

After integration with your trading partners, testing is conducted to ensure that the data flow runs smoothly and accurately.

Implementing EDI helps companies become more efficient by eliminating the need to print purchase orders, reducing manual work in receipting stock, and decreasing invoice matching errors. This streamlines operations and saves valuable time. One customer explained their experience:

“Our merchandising team is more efficient as they no longer need to print purchase orders, less time is spent receipting stock in our distribution centre and we’ve seen a reduction in the number of invoice matching errors.” – Jim Pears, Ecommerce Systems Manager, Feelunique.

Two of the main things to consider when adopting EDI are transaction volume and the resources and support needed to run the solution in the long term.

Volume of EDI transactions
How many transactions will you be using EDI for? Will it just be with a few customers or suppliers to start with or your entire trading network? By adopting EDI, do you expect your trading network to grow? How many times a day will you be exchanging documents?

The amount of transactions will determine how heavy the usage will be and will have an influence as to what solution you choose, whether that is a web EDI solution or integrated EDI into your order management system. Our technical experts will be able to advise which solution would be the best fit for your business’s needs. You may also find our blog post ëMoving beyond compliance with EDI ERP Integration’ useful.

Internal resources
Have you thought about how you would look after the day-to-day management of EDI? Are you looking to hire someone to take on these responsibilities? With an outsourced solution, you don’t have to.

An outsourced managed service solution takes away the pains and responsibilities that come with the day-to-day management of EDI. Our first-class managed service is led by a team of technical experts, continuously monitoring the delivery and processing of messages, and proactively resolving any issues meaning you don’t need to worry about it.

EDI can effortlessly integrate with your ERP system to enable smooth data exchange between your ERP and trading partners. This integration enhances efficiency, minimises errors, and provides real-time visibility into supply chain processes.

Yes, absolutely. Our solution integrates seamlessly with your ERP to deliver e-invoices automatically. No printing, scanning, or manual data entry required. You get clean, accurate invoice data delivered directly to your finance system, saving time and reducing errors. It’s fast, secure, and fully compliant with local e-Invoicing regulations.

We manage the technical side, working closely with your ERP provider, so you don’t have to juggle multiple contacts or systems.

EDI and APIs both help systems talk to each other, but they work differently. EDI is a tried-and-tested way to exchange standard business documents securely and reliably—think orders, invoices, and shipping notices. APIs are newer and let systems communicate in real time with more flexibility, often used for apps and dynamic data. Depending on your business needs, you might use one or both to keep your supply chain running smoothly.