Focus on Your Business. We'll Handle Your EDI.

An EDI managed service is where a company outsources its EDI requirements to an EDI provider, who not only provide an EDI solution, they also pro-actively manage the platform and the customers’ day-to-day EDI requirements.

Companies across all sectors are increasingly outsourcing their EDI requirements to a dedicated EDI managed service provider to overcome the constraints of managing an on-premise EDI solution.

An EDI Managed Service is a common approach that businesses use to outsource their EDI requirements. An EDI managed service overcomes the constraints of on-premise EDI by providing the necessary experience, skills and infrastructure, to allow companies to concentrate on their core competences.

Outsourcing to an EDI managed service provider removes the need for the customer to invest in EDI skills, processes, hardware, and software and therefore they no longer need to worry about technical EDI issues and maintenance costs. Instead, the EDI provider provides a scalable EDI platform and manages all of the customer’s electronic trading requirements, utilising the latest technology and expertise.

A secure, reliable infrastructure is the foundation for mission-critical B2B processes and is a key element of an EDI managed service, as is the continued maintenance of the platform and the provision of disaster recovery capabilities.

What sets an EDI managed service apart from a basic outsourced EDI solution is the management of day-to-day EDI activities on behalf of the client. With a basic outsourced EDI solution, the system is simply hosted for you but all other EDI requirements are your responsibility. Some companies have been caught out in the past, signing up to what they thought was a fully managed EDI service, when in fact it was simply an outsourced solution. We’ve created a checklist which outlines the top 10 factors to consider when choosing an EDI provider to ensure you don’t get missold.

A genuine fully managed EDI service includes the:

Implementation and full configuration of your EDI solution
Seamless on-boarding of all your trading partners
Day-to-day running of EDI on your behalf, including the on-going maintenance of trading partner connectors, mailboxes and messages
Pro-active monitoring of system availability, message delivery and message validation errors, resolving issues, in many cases without having to involve you
24/7 support for you your trading partners

As businesses expand and data exchange needs grow, EDI Managed Services provide the scalability and insights necessary for a secure and successful EDI system. Here are 10 notable benefits:

• EDI managed service reduces costs. When you outsource EDI management, the need for interviewing, onboarding, and paying salaries for additional internal staff is eliminated. Companies using cloud technology can also avoid investing in physical hardware.
• Improved internal bandwidth. Managing EDI systems is no longer the responsibility of internal teams. This means talent can focus on business critical tasks and innovation, rather than on the day –to- day running and upkeep of EDI.
• Expert collaboration. With an EDI managed service businesses gain access to a team of EDI experts. This team stay updated on the latest best practices and possess extensive historical knowledge.
• Less System Downtime. Managed service providers offer 24/7 monitoring to ensure EDI systems run smoothly. This means problems and issues are identified, diagnosed, and resolved quickly which reduces downtime.
• Quicker error resolution. Continuous monitoring by experts ensures errors and SLA issues are promptly addressed, avoiding missed SLA fees.
• Faster Onboarding. Providers use pre-built templates to expedite the onboarding of new partners, enhancing efficiency.
• Improved Order Accuracy. Enhanced monitoring, proper installation, and accurate mapping lead to timely and accurate order fulfillment with fewer errors.
• Increased Customer Satisfaction. Minimal downtime results in improved customer satisfaction. Using a EDI managed service provider can lead to an increase in positive company reviews and business opportunities.
• Enhanced Security. Managed service providers implement advanced security measures to protect sensitive data, ensuring compliance with industry standards.
• Scalability. EDI Managed Services easily scale to accommodate business growth and evolving data exchange needs, allowing companies to adapt quickly without major infrastructure changes.

Organizations often require or seek the assistance of managed service providers for a variety of reasons:

• A lack of in-house expertise/knowledge
• A lack of resources or bandwidth within internal teams
• The peace of mind that is comes from employing external experts
• Ambitious business goals and growth within an organization.

EDI Managed Services take on the role of expert translators. EDI experts perform data transformations, handle security and troubleshooting issues. This allows internal talent to focus on core business activities, which bring profit, innovation and new business to an organization. An EDI managed service enables cost savings whilst improving efficiency, and the reliability of robust security measures.

The problem with on-premise EDI solutions is that they can be notoriously difficult, expensive and time-consuming for in-house IT staff to manage. There are considerable complexities involved due to the vast array of standards used for exchanging data (such as Tradacoms, EDIFACT, EANCOM and XML). Multiple connectivity protocols such as AS2, FTP and SFTP, as well as ëlegacy’ protocols such as X25 and X400 create further complexities that need to be managed.

These complexities are intensified when trading partners make changes to their requirements, for example many retailers have moved from an EDI VAN to AS2 as their preferred connectivity preference and it is very common for trading partners to request new document types such as ASN’s. Even minor tweaks to documents, such as adding a new mandatory field, present challenges on an ongoing basis that makes maintaining EDI connections a time-consuming process which can distract internal IT resources from more strategic tasks.

The same is true for the on-boarding of suppliers, which needs to be managed, both in terms of supplier adoption and supplier enablement. Poor supplier onboarding is the single biggest reason for the failure of electronic trading and EDI initiatives.