Implementation Decisions


EDI implementation decisions must be agreed upon by trading partners.

Among the implementation decisions is the version or versions of the ANSI X12 standard to use – trading partners must use the same version of the standard, because it changes frequently.

The more trading partners you have, the higher the probability that you will have to support multiple versions of the ANSI X12 standard. The older the trading partner, the older the standard.

When you buy your software products one of the critical decisions is how many versions of the standard can be supported at the same time.
Are you going to use functional acknowledgments? The two key decisions are what will go into the FA, and when they will be sent.

You need to identify every single segment in detail – this level of operation agreement among trading partners is absolutely necessary and is very detail-oriented.

EDI management software tends to be flexible but you need to know what you want to do with it (version management, etc.) before purchasing software.