EDI Electronic Data Interchange
Catenary Software can help your business grow by providing your firm with the ability to effectively process and validate EDI transactions. EDI can make even small firms bark with the big dogs. EDI remains the only way to communicate orders and invoices with some firms.
For Newcomers to EDI:
Consider EDI as a set of standardized messages: invoices, payment orders and remittance advice, purchase orders and acknowledgements, order status inquiries and reports, shipping schedules, acknowledgement and the like.
Each EDI message type has a number: EDI 810 is an invoice and EDI 820 is a payment order. Though hundreds of EDI messages have been defined, your firm might only use a handful of them. The EDI file format predates the Internet. The current standard is 5010, though many trading partners have not upgraded their transactions to reflect this standard.
Why Choose Catenary Software EDI Consulting
Every trading partner prefers to receive and transmit EDI in their own way. Some will want their EDI delivered through a value-added network. Others will want their EDI delivered as files or via other methods. Do not expect what works for one relationship to work for another. You will spend more money and time retrofitting someone else's simplistic solution than having Catenary Software solve the problem, relationship by relationship.
EDI solution vendors will tell you they can tame EDI. Improve your customer and supplier relationships, reduce administration costs, eliminate paper invoices. It all sounds so wonderful. EDI integration is not trivial: your business is unique. You won't be able to change your trading partner's specifications and it's almost pointless to ask them. Furthermore, when those requirements do change, you will again be on the hook for expensive consultants to retrofit a closed-source solution.
EDI is hard enough to do right but even harder to do wrong. Exposing a bad EDI implementation to your trading partners can damage your business. Your firm can create expensive dependencies on third-party vendors. Closed-source solution firms make their money on consulting and upgrade fees.
We can construct an EDI solution with rugged, proven, Open Source components you can own and maintain, ultimately deliving what others only promise. EDI only seems like a standard. Your trading partners are important: do things their way. Be prepared to explain the way how your firm wants to receive and transmit EDI.
Our Experience: Your Solution.
We've been at this for 25 years. We have yet to see two EDI trading partners generate an invoice the same way. Catenary Software can deliver a better solution, congruent with your needs and those of your trading partners. The Catenary Software approach to EDI uses external rule sets to validate EDI messages and robust message queuing to ensure EDI is received and delivered without resorting to proprietary technology. Our solutions are fixable: we know where things change and where they go wrong. Your firm will able to present your trading parters with your own EDI specifications and working examples.
Your trading partners are too important to warrant anything but complete compliance with their requirements. Catenary Software has EDI and business integration experience with Blue Cross / Blue Shield, Pfizer, Walmart, AAFES, Food Lion, Albertsons, General Electric, US Army, US Transportation Command and many others. We know EDI, but only you know your business. We are intent upon delivering you an affordable solution you can understand and maintain.
SeeBeyond Migration.
Much of the EDI we've encountered has been in the context of SeeBeyond SOA implementations. Catenary Software can migrate SeeBeyond to common sense, open source SOA frameworks such as Fuse ESB. We have been consulting in SeeBeyond since 2001.