Help! My customer is asking me to use EDI.

You received an e-mail "In order for us to continue purchasing from you, we'll need you to use EDI". You've probably pushed this moment off a few times, but this time you've run out of excuses. It's time to bite the bullet and dive in.

Where to start?

Your first decision is going to be what platform, service or managed service you will use for this implementation. You have a variety of options, you can purchase or subscribe to an EDI software package, hire or train an EDI resource and manage everything in house. You could choose a service provider that will set up the mappings for you, but still leave you with the headache of managing support and costly changes. And last, you could chose a fully managed EDI service for provider like Arcus. Not only do you save yourself the stress of EDI, but you don't pay any costs up front for the set up and only pay for the transactions going through the system. This is a huge bonus if it's a smaller trading partner you are setting up first as it keeps your costs extremely low.

SAP EDI Step-By-Step Guide for Customer Onboarding

Let's assume you are choosing to outsource your EDI to a managed service solution. Here are the steps and phases you will go through:

1. Set up your connectivity to your back end

There are different ways to connect into SAP depending on your service provider. This could include SFTP and file pickup, remote function calls, REST services, ALE and others. Once you understand how your partner's system will connect you may need to do some customization or configuration to get set up. In the case of Arcus, our basis team can take care of any set up required at no cost to you.

2. Choose your ISA/GS ID's (like your EDI Address)

Your ISA and GS ID's go at the envelope level for any EDI transactions you send or receive. It can be up to 15 alphanumeric characters, and the main requirement is that it is unique. For this reason, often a phone number or DUNS number is used. Another popular option is a variation of the company name.

3. Obtain specifications and exchange EDI information

Once you have step 2 complete, you are ready to exchange EDI information with your trading partner. Your managed service provider can take care of this for you. They will get the required information from your customer, including their specs and preferred method of connectivity. This could include AS2, SFTP or VAN. Ideally, your provider can support all of these and work with the customer's preference.

4. Review business requirements and set up SAP

Your EDI partner will review the EDI specifications and discuss your specific business processes with you. They'll gather information they will need to set up the EDI mapping. This can include information such as: units of measure, discounts/charges, payment terms, taxes, packing and shipping. This will allow them to properly map the data from SAP IDOC to EDI and vice versa not only to meet your customers specifications but to ensure the proper flow of data back into your system.

Using the information about the SAP business partners and organizational units, they can set up the EDI partners in SAP as well as the output condition records

5. EDI mapping and unit testing

Next, your EDI provider will do the development to set up the mapping for your specific business scenarios. They will test the connectivity with the trading partner and utilize sample data from them in their unit testing. The partner will send in an order to utilize in this process, and the EDI team will bring that into SAP to create a sales order. They'll use that to ship and bill and send data back out to your partner for some unit testing

6. EDI Integration testing

Depending on your trading partner, integration testing could mean running one scenario end-to-end, or they could have a whole portal full of tests that they want to complete. If your partner uses SPS Commerce for example, one step will be to review the proposed list of tests and determine if they even apply to your business (such as drop-ships and returns), and work with them to remove the irrelevant scenarios.

Once the tests are agreed upon, these scenarios will be worked through between the customer, your EDI team and your business team. The business will want to review the created orders and ensure deliveries and invoices are created as expected so that the EDI team is working with accurate data.

7. Cutover planning

While cutover planning starts earlier in the process, with the integration testing finalized, the cutover plan can be completed. This will include setting up production connectivity, moving any necessary transports or data to SAP production and readying the EDI system. When a date and time for the go-live have been agreed upon, you can work backwards with the cutover planning to get things ready on time.

8. Go-Live and hyper care support

When any customer goes live, there is a period of intense hyper care support provided. With our Arcus managed service, no additional cost for support from our side. We will monitor all inbound and outbound transactions to ensure the data is accurate and acknowledged in a timely manner. We will notify the business team of anything that looks out of the ordinary, or any delays in processing.

What's next?

While it can feel overwhelming to get started with your first EDI customer, it doesn't have to be. With the right partner, you can get that first customer up and running with no up front costs, and begin to see the time saving this new automation can provide. If you need some help getting started, please reach out at info@contax.com for a no obligation discussion on SAP EDI and what might be a good fit for your business.