EDI Software Functions


Communication: If you are going to communicate with VANs, your software package must support it and preferably be certified by a particular VAN that you will be using.

All EDI software packages perform translation.

The crucial question to ask is how many versions of the ANSI X12 standard to support. If you are dealing with many trading partners, this can become an issue. Most of the translation products do a good job of validation, which ensures that the output and input data conforms to the ANSI X12 standard.

Translation: Netscape uses the TSI Mercator system for handling data translation.

EDI process management: It's important for the EDI system to handle the operational aspects of EDI. It should handle aspects of scheduling, maintaining an audit trail, archive and retrieval, query and reporting, and system restart.

Trading partner management involves:

Integration: Integration is probably the most important aspect of your software function. The integration function allows your EDI software to communicate with other departmental functions and internal applications. It's important to key your investment in EDI software keeping in mind the amount and degree of integration with internal systems that will be required.

Integration also refers to data mapping, or changing your EDI data into a format that is compatible with internal legacy systems.