We set up electronic data interchange with retail chains and major buyers alongside your ERP. We turn incoming orders into your records, your shipments into despatch advices and your invoices into the message the buyer expects; a faulty message is never lost — it lands in a queue, gets corrected and is sent again.
Working with major buyers comes with an invisible condition: sending data in the form they demand. Retail chains in Europe, large industrial groups and logistics networks do not send orders by email; the order leaves their system as a standard message, and they expect the despatch advice and the invoice back in the same standard. A supplier that cannot keep to this arrangement will, at some point, drop off the supplier list — however good the product is.
In practice, many factories run this with a workaround. Someone logs into the buyer's portal by hand, checks the orders, prints them out and keys them into the ERP again; after shipment the same information is entered once more, this time in the opposite direction. The method works at low volume. As volume grows and buyers multiply — each with its own portal, its own field naming and its own timing — the job turns into someone's full-time role and the error rate climbs.
Electronic data interchange is the standardised version of all this. Order, order response, despatch advice and invoice are defined as separate message types; the transport protocol, who the message is from and to, and the acknowledgement are all part of the standard. The layer we build receives these messages, converts them into the record structure of your ERP, and does the same job in the opposite direction. What is critical is not the conversion itself, but auditing that the conversion is correct and defining in advance what happens when something breaks.
There is a limit worth being honest about here: electronic data interchange is not just a software installation — it is also a connectivity and reconciliation exercise. The buyer has its own technical documentation, its own message subset and its own test process; the connection may require an access point or a service provider subscription, and that subscription is set up in your name. We take on the message conversion, the ERP connection, error handling and the technical side of the test process run with the buyer; the commercial terms and the subscription decision remain yours.
Businesses making food, textiles, home textiles, packaging and consumer goods whose products go onto chain store shelves. With these buyers, electronic data interchange is not a preference but a condition of being a supplier, and the compliance timetable is usually set by the buyer.
Manufacturers supplying parts or services to OEMs in automotive, home appliances and machinery. Having order calls and delivery schedules flow from system to system is a direct scoring matter in an environment where delivery performance is measured.
Businesses dealing with numerous buyers, each imposing its own portal and its own format. The real gain here is not speed but preserving a single internal data model and eliminating a separate way of working for each buyer.
Companies selling to corporate and public-sector buyers abroad that are required to deliver invoices over the network the buyer belongs to. On these networks, acceptance of the invoice depends on formal requirements, and a rejected invoice delays payment.
The message types to be exchanged with the buyer are defined: order, order response, despatch advice, invoice and, where needed, stock and price notifications. Because every buyer has its own subset and mandatory fields, the message mapping is worked out one by one from the buyer's technical documentation.
An incoming message becomes an order record in your system, an outgoing shipment becomes a despatch advice, and your invoice record becomes an invoice message. Fields such as product codes, units, carton and pallet structure, discounts and payment terms are mapped to your master data; an unmatched record does not slip through silently — it is flagged as an error.
How the message reaches the buyer is set up, and acknowledgements are tracked. Messages sent but not yet acknowledged are never left dangling; every pending message is visible in a list. The connection method — and an access point subscription, if required — is determined by the buyer's terms.
Messages that are rejected or stall during conversion are held in a queue, with the cause written out in readable form. Once the correction is made, the message is sent again. This is the most neglected and most trouble-prone point in electronic data interchange: errors must never disappear.
Orders, shipments and invoices are matched against each other; under-delivered lines, unbilled shipments and invoices with no counterpart are reported. Most disputes with buyers stem from these three not agreeing — and it is usually noticed late.
The despatch advice and the physical packing have to agree: the carton and pallet numbering, the information on the label and the content of the message must be the same. If the label and barcode side is already in place we connect to it; if not, we build it together.
Which messages will be exchanged with which buyer, the buyer's technical documentation and the mandatory fields are examined. This step usually takes longer than expected, because requirements vary from buyer to buyer and some fields have no counterpart in your system at all. Missing fields are identified here.
Product codes, units, carton and pallet structure, plus address and party definitions, are mapped against the buyer's. If there is no numbering scheme, one is set up. Projects that start without this preparation keep stalling at the same point during testing.
The message conversions are written, the ERP connection is built, and the transport route and acknowledgement flow go live. The error queue and monitoring panel are set up from the start; error handling bolted on later does not save the job.
Messages are exercised in both directions in the buyer's test environment, with corrections made until sign-off. The test period depends largely on the buyer's calendar; this needs saying up front, because it is where the unpredictable part of the project timeline lies.
We start with a limited number of real transactions, check the reconciliation, then open up the volume. After handover, pending messages, rejected messages and unmatched records are monitored routinely, and who watches what is handed to your team in writing.
A portal can be enough at low volume with a single buyer. As buyers and transaction volume grow, the portal means the same data being keyed in twice, and that is where the error rate climbs. A portal also makes measured obligations — such as sending the despatch advice on time — dependent on a person. So the right way to decide is by looking at volume and the number of buyers.
If it is enough, using it is the right call, and we will tell you so plainly. In practice the problem is usually not whether the module exists, but whether it covers the message subset and field mapping the buyer demands. In discovery we first examine what the existing module covers; if a gap remains, the layer fills only that gap — we do not rewrite what already works.
It depends on the transport method the buyer accepts. In some cases a direct connection is built; in others an access point or a service provider subscription is required, and it is set up in your name. This cost is discussed up front; we do not leave it as an item that surfaces later.
A rejected message lands in the error queue, its cause is written out in readable form and the relevant person is notified. Once corrected, it is sent again. The most important rule in building the system is this: no message ever disappears silently. Pending and rejected messages remain visible on a single screen.
The duration of the technical side depends on the number of messages and on whether your data is ready; the real uncertainty emerges in the buyer's test calendar. So we plan in two parts: a clear scope and timeline for the work under our control, and a wait marked as a dependency for the testing on the buyer's side. Compressing it into a single promised number would not be realistic.
Message flows working with your buyers; a conversion layer connected to your ERP; a monitoring panel showing pending, rejected and unmatched records; an order, shipment and invoice reconciliation report; and documentation explaining how to proceed when a new buyer is added. Everything produced, including the source code and conversion definitions, belongs to you.
In a 30-minute discovery call we listen to what you need and tell you honestly whether custom development or an off-the-shelf product is the better answer.
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