Give us your problems Part I

If you own a profile on LinkedIn or Xing and indicate an EDI background, you will know the phenomenon: At regular intervals, you will get job offers, sometimes connected with the petition to recommend suitable candidates if you are not interested. This shows: Specialists for EDI are scarce on the job market and hence expensive.

The reason for this is that the job on the one hand requires classic IT skills like an understanding of programming languages or the functionality of data transfer protocols. An EDI specialist should on the other hand possess at least a sound understanding of the business processes depicted in the EDI data.

For employers and team managers, this implies two consequences. The first one is trivial: Invest into a stable bond between your EDI specialists and the company! The second consequence should be to utilize these scarce people in the most efficient way.

In most EDI departments, there are tasks that are still solved manually but could be automated with simple scripts. For example, you could write a small program that raises alerts if files are not picked up from a specific folder or bundles the configuration of several new partners. If the necessary knowledge does not exist in your department, you can acquire it easily in the internet.

We can also help you on your way towards more efficiency in EDI. For example, what would happen if your colleagues would not have to check faulty messages by hand? How much time would they save if they would no longer not have to write extensive emails with error reports for them? Or if they could identify flaws within own messages on the spot?

As an answer to these questions, we have developed our validation API. The validation process is structured rather easily: You send us your message via our API or copy it into the test bench on our online platform. As a result, you get a report that names not only structural mistakes but also illustrates the result of logic checks of the message content in a plain way.

With that, you are not only able to spot errors at a glance. Attached as a PDF to an email, you can accord your data exchange partner's insightful feedback on their messages without effort. By request, we overtake that transmission for you too, so your EDI specialists can focus on implementing new processes and interfaces.