The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the most used electronic communication system for data interchange between business partners, which uses a dedicated transmission channel and a defined format.
The use of a standardized language allows to:
- minimize human intervention in the exchange of documents
- automate integration with ERP
- speed up processing times
- delete paper documents
The types of documents that can be exchanged electronically via EDI are many, from orders to invoices, from transport documents to order confirmations.
Station can work in both directions for the management of an EDI flow, that is in coding and in decoding:
- is able to transform the information into the EDI format (EURITMO, EDIFACT, ODETTE, etc.) requested by the business partner
- it can manage different types of EDI standards and through special Cross Reference tables convert EDI records for the automated data entry
Station also gives the possibility to make conversions from one standard to another one (e.g. from ODETTE to EURITMO for the automotive industry in the big distribution), functionality often necessary in those companies in which an internal standard has been adopted, different from that used by business partners.
For the extraction of data from EDI messages, the mapping process in the configuration phase is considerably simplified by the presence in Station of pre-loaded dictionaries, containing the definitions of the main messages in the various EDI standards.
In the configuration phase, therefore, it will be sufficient to define which standard to apply in reading the file and the visual mapping tool will show which types of information have been automatically identified within the message.
A practical example of how Station can be used for the EDI files decoding comes from the Arcoprofil srl case history.