Obstacles on the path to your own EDI interface Part III

One could assume that the bigger part of the work has been done with the design of the interface. Unfortunately, the mass rollout also holds its difficulties that can threaten the success of your project as a whole. In the worst case, even after months only a few partners are connected and your project does not generate any noticeable effects for your company. Therefore, we show you how you can reduce that risk.

As capacity-consuming IT projects are conducted each day in many companies, you should synchronize the timelines for the onboarding process early with your partners. Already while you are in the preparation phase, you can contact all of your scheduled partners. In doing so, you should not only inquire contact persons from the business department and the EDI implementation, but also request information in which periods an onboarding would be possible and impossible. Depending on the answers, you can group your partners into packages or waves for the later mass rollout and distribute them on the axis of time. In ideal circumstances, you can keep the onboarding times short and show first productive results for your project in next to no time.

At least for the partners with the highest document volume, you should even with temporary indisposition dig deeper whether the partner could at least take care of parts of the project: For example, filling in a questionnaire by the business department, set up the EDI connection or read through the guideline to your EDI interface. All of this can help to accelerate the rest of the onboarding process, when the partner is fully at your disposal. Also, the partner might identify difficulties for him at an early stage.

According to experience, many projects get delayed because not all participants get the right or complete information on the EDI interfaces. For example, if a document with sample messages is not made available to the EDI provider, he has to implement the mapping alone on the basis of the guideline. Or if outdated data sheets with the parameters of your EDI connection are distributed. You should therefore keep all information regarding your project centrally at one place where the involved partners and also their external EDI providers have access. For example, in rollout projects, we create spaces on our Onboarding Feature for guidelines, sample messages and frequently asked questions and create accounts for all partners involved in the project.

When the project involves a greater number of partners, you have unfortunately to reckon with the fact that some partners completely refuse to collaborate or delay considerably every step of procedure. You will greatly benefit if you have organized support by your management and your purchasing department already in the preparation phase. They can often exert the necessary pressure in escalation meetings that leads to an improvement of the cooperation. Whenever possible, it is also helpful in the long run to include an obligation for the partner to cooperate in EDI projects into the contracts for the underlying business processes.

One advice at the end: There is no need to feel insecure. There will always be partners that would have composed an interface differently or would have used different segments or qualifiers. Even in industrial sectors with a rather high standardization like the automotive industry, EDI standards are used differently in detail. If you have prepared the project well and conferred with your most important partners and service providers, you will get an interface that can be implemented by the great majority of your partners and adds value to your company.

Please find here part I and part II of our series.