EDI-Onboarding — Mass Partner Connection
Is the most important part of any EDI project. To ensure all your partners work with you through EDI service, it's important to entrust this process to professionals.
Our specialists will carry out the onboarding quickly, accurately, and in full, ensuring the correct connection of every partner. Only then will using EDI bring you maximum benefit and allow you to fully unlock the potential of electronic document exchange.
1. Why You Need This
Onboarding is the mass connection of partners to electronic document exchange for private and public sector companies of any industry.
Connecting partners is the most important part of any EDI project, since you get the greatest benefit when the maximum number of partners work with you in digital format. The result brings less manual work, fewer errors, and faster processes.
You need this service if you are a retailer and want to connect all your suppliers to EDI, if you are a manufacturer or wholesaler and need to connect your buyers, or if you are a transport and logistics company working with a large number of customers. You can also onboard service providers to receive all incoming invoices as e-invoices.
2. How It Works
The process of connecting partners consists of two parts:
1. Administrative component (non-technical)
The most important part of connecting partners is professional communication and agreements with partners on exchanging documents with you electronically. Docura provides communication, preparation, and management of the connection project.
The onboarding initiator is expected to provide administrative support for the project — that is, motivating partners to make the necessary changes to their internal processes in order to switch to EDI.
2. Technical connection
Technical connection includes setting up the document transfer channel, formats, catalogs, and testing document transfer. Your partners are provided with instructions on the various EDI connection options depending on the technical capabilities of their accounting system.
3. Checklist: Partner Onboarding Stages
1. What the onboarding initiator does
- Appoints a person responsible and confirms management support.
- Compiles a list of partners to be connected.
- Prioritizes partners by document turnover volume.
- Sends partners a letter about the transition to EDI and general technical connection instructions. The letter is an important tool when connecting partners. It is always sent to partners by the onboarding initiator.
2. What Docura does
- Communicates with each partner and determines technical readiness.
- Connects partners technically: channels, formats, tests.
- Ensures the correct launch of document exchange.
- Continues working with the remaining partners.
4. Onboarding Documents
5. Onboarding Example
You are a retailer with a chain of 20 building materials stores and more than a hundred local and foreign suppliers. You work according to the following scheme: you send an order to a supplier, and they send you an invoice. The number of orders you send to suppliers is approximately 5,000 per month, and there are about as many incoming invoices.
Currently, some suppliers use EDI, some exchange documents by email, and some accept orders by phone but deliver the invoice on paper together with the goods. As a result, your employees spend dozens of hours of work time processing orders, reconciling and manually entering incoming invoices, as well as correcting manual-entry errors and archiving documents.
Project Goal
Benefits to the retailer::
- standardized document exchange according to the ORDER → INVOICE scheme
- reduce of manual data entry
- decrease of errors and speed up order processing
- increase of efficiency across the entire supply chain
Rationale for the decision:
- competitors (e.g., Walmart) have EDI as a mandatory standard
- manual processing of one document takes ≈ 25 minutes, EDI — 2 minutes
Onboarding Strategy
The retailer decides to connect as many suppliers as possible within 12 months.
Key principles:
- unified document format
- unified exchange channel
- mandatory EDI for all new suppliers
- priority connection of suppliers with large and medium delivery volumes
Supplier Segmentation
Suppliers are divided into 4 groups:
Group
Characteristics
Approach
A — large
20–30 companies, high order volume
Mandatory connection within the first 3 months
B — medium
40–50 companies
Connection within 6 months
C — small
30–40 companies
Recommended to work via the WEB portal
D — foreign
10–15 companies
EDIFACT/XML support, separate stream
Onboarding Process
- The onboarding initiator and the EDI operator carry out a joint marketing campaign.
- The onboarding initiator sends each partner a letter about the transition to EDI.
- The EDI operator contacts each partner and performs technical connection and testing.
Expected Effect
As a result of connecting 80% of partners:
- Manual data entry decreases by 70–90%.
- The number of errors in incoming documents decreases by 95%.
- Dozens of hours of employee work time are saved.
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