The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

As with most strategies, we start out defining the goal, or the place we want to end up. With an EDI strategy roll out, our destination is a reliable bidirectional communication between our organization and one or more trading partners.

With this as the abstract version of our goal. We break the task into three sections. Data types that we will exchange both outbound and inbound. What transport or connectivity solutions we will used to ensure a robust and reliable transmission and reception of the data. And what data translation, storage and processing solutions we will employ.

Data Types

Many people don’t think about this part very much because they have only dealt with EDI systems that are already in service or in the process of being launched.  By this point the types of data being passed between trading partners have already been decided.  So to begin this process we ask what type of business we are conducting.

If we are doing e-commerce, we are probably going to exchange orders, confirmations, invoices and ship notices.  If we are a retailer, we may be receiving catalog data, where if we are a vendor we will be transmitting it.  And so forth.

We can find out what document types to use in two easy ways.  First, any of our trading partners currently exchange EDI data with other parties, (like integrating with a vendor that has other customers doing EDI), we can ask for if we haven’t already received the EDI specifications that they use.  If we are setting up a new integration with a new trading partner with no EDI history, we will then need to look at the list of EDI document types and find the ones that will fill our needs of data exchange.  (All of the EDI document specifications have a name as well as a number.  For this exercise we will need to look at their name.)

Transformation, Processing and Storage

For data coming into the process for our trading partners is what I call “inbound” data.  And so of course data going out to a trading partner is called “outbound” data.  In either case we start the Transformation, processing and storage by identifying what our destination format, and location will be for the data.  Inbound data has the destination of whatever process or storage we are going to place it, and in the format that we need it in to process or store.  And outbound data has the destination of our connectivity solution to our trading partner and the format of the EDI document type that we have agreed to use.

This is called Target Based planning and it goes hand in hand with Target Based Mapping.  We plan by starting with where we want to end up, in the transformation, processing and storage of the data.  Then we work backword from that goal and create a way to get the data from where it is, to where we need it to be.

For instance if we have the destination of an EDI 850 on our AS2 connection, we start with a standards format of the 850 the trading partner can accept and the location or API that our AS2 connection needs us to use.  After we have that target defined, we map and plan out how to get our order data to that location, coming out of our database, ERP, e-commerce system or some file that we are processing.  (Possibly from a combination of these.)

And we do the opposite if we are processing an inbound 850, we start with the format and interface that we need to input an order into our system, and then build the process to get the information we need out of the 850 and trading partner database etc.

Connectivity

This is a critically important issue, that we will not go into detail here.  But you will want a connectivity solution that is reliable and provides you with a positive confirmation that a file has been received by the other partner and establishes accountability for the transaction, and a process for remediation if there is any dispute.  I will have to talk more about connectivity another time when I can go into greater detail.

Summary

Breaking big tasks like rolling out an EDI strategy can become very complex.  There are two secrets to being successful.  First, break your big tasks into three pieces; Inputs, Outputs and Processes.  The second secret is to begin with your end, or goal, or target.  And then work back from there.  Putting these two pieces of advice into use will make your EDI strategy more manageable and come of more smoothly.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under b2b, EDI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.