Maximize Your EDI: The Importance of Aligning Supply Chain Technology With Business Processes

You’ve experienced them before and know how quickly they can snowball. Issues like missed payments, partner exceptions, and purchase order questions can all turn into larger problems if you don’t have a way to track them and respond to your suppliers in a timely manner.

And EDI is the technology that drives all that information.

EDI by itself is complex, but you shouldn’t have to stress about it or let it manage you. It’s the processes that impact your business that matter most. So isn’t it about time you take the complexity out of EDI and take back control over your data and processes?

The Key to Supply Chain Success

As a retailer, you know that EDI is an important part of your supply chain. But just how important it actually is may surprise you. Many simply consider it a ‘means to an end’ and deal with it as best they can–resigned to the fact that it’s not worth the time or resources to make it work for them. 

But what you may not realize is just how critical it is to your supply chain management and how it impacts your business, both long-term and on a day-to-day basis. Customer relationship management, customer service management, procurement, payment, and returns are just some of the processes that are heavily dependent on EDI. 

For example, in customer relationship management (CRM), EDI facilitates the electronic exchange of order, invoicing, and payment data with customers and suppliers. However, without the right platform to help decipher that data, it’s hard to reap all the benefits that EDI has to offer (e.g. the speed at which you exchange those documents). 

When you can get the most out of your EDI and stop relying so much on time-consuming, manual processes, you’ll be able to realize some of these major benefits

• Reduced costs. The automation of previously manual/paper document processes and the visibility EDI can provide (with the right platform) allows you to manage and stop late shipments (on average 3% of retail sales are lost to late shipments).
• Improved efficiency and productivity. When you get the most out of your EDI, you’ll be able to process more business documents in less time. 
• Reduced errors. With EDI in a human-readable format that anyone in your organization can manage, you can stay proactive when it comes to catching problems before they happen.
• Optimization of tracking and reporting. Since EDI can be integrated with your other systems, it will enable you to improve business processes and provide data collection and analysis.
• Improved relationships/loyalty with business partners. The speed of optimized EDI allows you to transfer documents instantly,  and empower your suppliers with faster, more reliable deliveries.

The Right Technology & Partner

You’re probably thinking, what does it mean to ‘get the most out of my EDI?’ Well, it starts with an EDI service provider that has experience to enable it to work for you. This involves adopting the right technology that will allow you to put EDI into a human-readable format, achieve visibility, and simplify your complex data. In essence, it means leveraging a platform that will align with your business processes and goals, not just create more of a bottleneck in your organization. 

That’s a big issue in today’s complex, ever-changing world of supply chain management. In fact, according to Gartner, 36% of supply chain organizations say their own digital projects don’t align to their corporate digital business initiatives. 

The problem is many leaders are undertaking digital supply chain projects in their own silos. And if you’re going to decide to reap the benefits of supply chain technology, your entire organization needs to be all in or you’ll be a part of that 36%. 

To get aligned it’s important to get “buy-in” across your organization to find a technology (and partner) that will unlock your full potential as a company. This should involve having open and honest conversations with key leaders across the business to understand their challenges and goals and how they will align with your overall strategy.

How Syncrofy Can Help

Syncrofy is a simpler way to EDI because it creates a framework around it for people who aren’t familiar or who don’t have experience working with it. It also provides data-driven business insights for users without prior advanced technical knowledge, allowing you to save time and focus your attention on mission-critical tasks rather than aimlessly digging through files.

When it comes to generated purchase orders or SLA exceptions, Syncrofy will keep you informed and in charge. You can create notifications and alerts to remain on top of your business operations, set rules to proactively monitor for errors, get contextual alerts on SLA exceptions and other critical issues, allowing you to make better decisions, faster.

Syncrofy also enables you to securely share and exchange information, allowing you, your internal teams, and partner organizations to identify problems. Together, you can view the entire lifecycle of any document, helping to eliminate gray areas in the supply chain process and promote transparent communication.

Syncrofy stands out from other solutions in the marketplace because it provides you with full visibility and valuable insights on your supply chain right out of the box. There’s nothing to configure, no mapping, or specialized data warehouse required. From the get go, you can see what’s going on across your network, what’s working, and where potential problems may occur. This allows you to be proactive, respond to disruption, and stay on the same page with suppliers.

Are you ready to give Syncrofy a try to see what it can do for your retail supply chain?

Learn more about Syncrofy…

Explore how Syncrofy can help you take back control over your supply chain and request a demo today.

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