Custom EDI Integration

Not everyone has the same B2B integration needs. And not all supplier systems can accommodate the data requirements of their customers. This is why EDI PLUS provides a highly flexible, any-to-any solution.

We can support whatever message types, data formats and communications protocols you need to use, including web services. We can also send additional messages that your ERP system might not be able to generate such as Dispatch Advice Notes and Status Update messages.

Message type translation

Does your customer want to receive a Despatch Advice Note so that they can receipt stock into their warehouse system, but your system can only provide an Invoice for their finance system? This common situation is easily dealt with. You simply produce an Invoice as normal, and the EDI PLUS service can immediately produce a Dispatch Advice Note for your customer. The Invoice will then be sent on when required.

Extra messages such as Status Updates

There are often similar situations with Order Status Updates, where customers increasingly want their suppliers to provide progress updates on the status of their orders in near-real-time. Few supplier ERP systems are capable of producing the range of detailed update messages that various customers want. But we can help you to generate the necessary messages for your customers using partial information, and/or by establishing some rules.

We can provide the necessary content in the format required by your customer, by combining details from the original Order with whatever additional information you can provide. Rules can also be agreed so that the EDI PLUS service generates appropriate “fill-in” messages in between status updates. For example, an extra “Loading” message might need to precede a “Despatched” message.

Non-standard communications requirements

There are many EDI standards, both for message formats and communications methods. In addition, there are also various non-standard ways of exchanging data. Supporting many different requirements can be a problem for any business. That’s where we can help.

Rather than developing a solution for each different requirement in-house, you can simply connect to the EDI PLUS service which already deals with many of these non-standard connections. And if there is a new requirement that we don’t currently support, we can still almost certainly provide a solution – quickly and cost-effectively.

Web services

Partly because of the drive towards near-real-time information, and partly because of the growing role of the Internet, a number of clients are turning to web services instead of traditional EDI communications methods.

Providing a web service connection for a particular trading partner may not be too challenging for some in-house development teams. But providing a robust, secure and scalable solution is not a trivial task. What happens when you need to support a second, different web service connection – or ten, or even a hundred?

If your internal resources can’t support this, or their valuable time needs to be focused elsewhere, we can help.