When you finally land your product on Walmart shelves, the next step is to comply with their supplier integration policies—and that means EDI (Electronic Data Interchange). This can seem daunting, especially if your company has done little to no EDI in the past.

Getting this wrong can lead to costly chargebacks that cut into your profits. It’s crucial to choose the right EDI solution or provider—one that understands Walmart and can guide you from start to finish, ensuring timely setup and ongoing compliance.

What Walmart Expects from New Suppliers

The first thing you will need is a RetailLink account. This is Walmart’s portal for sharing specifications, setting up connectivity, and going through the testing process. This needs to be set up under a user of an internal team member.

Once you are in RetailLink, you can see what EDI documents Walmart requires from your company. Depending on the frequency of replenishment and types of products, the required EDI transactions will vary. This can include some or all of the following:

Step-by-Step EDI Onboarding Process for Walmart

• Get access to RetailLink
• Download the specifications for the required transactions
• Set up your chosen communication method (typically, Walmart prefers AS2)
• Map your IDocs to EDI and EDI to IDocs to comply with Walmart specifications and your internal business requirements
• Go through the testing process using the self-testing framework on RetailLink
• Migrate to production and monitor the live traffic

Onboarding Decisions

One of your most important decisions is selecting an EDI provider. Will you use a managed service, or implement an in-house solution? Who will support you after go-live?

For a deeper dive into this, check out these past blogs from CONTAX:

4 Considerations for Your EDI Platform How to Begin Your Foray into EDI and Keep Costs in Check SAP EDI Managed Service vs. Traditional EDI Outsourcing

Another decision is how to take in certain Walmart-specific data such as department and internal vendor number. Options include utilizing header text, repurposing an unused field, or adding a custom field. The right choice depends on the rest of your SAP business process, and is a decision your SAP EDI solution provider can talk you through.

Conclusion

If you’re onboarding with Walmart—or struggling to stay compliant—we can help. Our SAP-integrated EDI managed service supports all Walmart requirements, with no upfront onboarding cost, including end-to-end SAP and EDI support.