9 Common Mistakes Made In EDI Integrations

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

EDI has existed since the '70s and is only growing every year in terms of the number of transactions and trading partners.

It has survived APIs and would continue to not only survive but also thrive in the form of business standards as technologies such as blockchain come into the picture. 

Having said that, EDI integrations are known for their notoriety in terms of the time taken to onboard a partner and difficulty in maintaining the integration without breaking during production.

However, for the most part, the challenges in EDI integration are not technological challenges, rather they are outcomes of bad quality processes.

Here are some common, simple mistakes organizations make with EDI integrations that turn out to be costly.

• EDI specification can be valid but still inadequate
• Not writing test cases and testing them
• Incomplete master data setup
• Not validating inbound data and outbound data
• Intermediaries break the chain
• Poor change management
• Not being aware of the destination’s data type & character limits
• Not insisting on an acknowledgment
• Not monitoring your Infrastructure