Decoding EDI: A successful case study

Photo by Soumil Kumar from Pexels

Each eCommerce company has their own needs based on their experiences. In terms of integrations and connectivity, we'd like to talk more about EDI and how we managed to remove barriers technology wise and price wise for small and medium sized companies.

As you know, sales channels like Lowe's, Home Depot and other big players will not enable businesses to sell on their platform unless they have an EDI integration. EDI is also required to connect with large vendors like Ashley Furniture, Cymax, Aeon & more. In the very recent past, EDI integration had many barriers associated with it, like price and complexity.

4Psite simplified the EDI service, making it easy for the smaller, resource stretched retailers to have access to the major sales channels and/or top-tier suppliers for dropshipping.

In this conversation, we decided to give you a glimpse into an actual scenario, from one of our customers. It is important to emphasize that we keep undisclosed confidential data, such as our clients’ names and private information in this article. The goal here is to maintain the conversation and offer a real-life example of what can be accomplished with efficient EDI connections.

Our client has 8 active stores at the moment and they all require EDI connection. Here are a few examples: Wayfair, OverStock, Houzz, Build.com. But see, this company has another special requirement when it comes to EDI. They are not online sellers, but they actually drop ship for these marketplaces.

How do they work?

The company has a special organization: Markets > 4Psite > Drop Ship > End Customer.

4Psite captures the orders and the company dropships them for their clients' final customer. So, in their case, EDI is so important that they couldn't operate in any other way. They must provide the connection because they act as the last step before shipping the purchase to the end customer. And they should receive the orders via EDI as well. Their operation requires that data is transmitted accurately and rapidly.

4Psite is their main hub and they log into the system on an on-going basis, daily. It's imperative for them to have it all centralized, to have it all belonging in the same cloud-based system.

Another thing that accommodates their demands is our ability to integrate with QuickBooks Online, where 4Psite transmits the financial transactions they need to keep track of.

All this back and forth is only possible because 4Psite transformed EDI into an efficient connection, without complications or the client needing to do complex operations. It's simple, automated and maintains their business flowing both ways.

How does 4Psite work?

Now, let's think about your own needs. Are you selling on markets that require EDI connection? Or are you also dropshipping like our client? If it's one way or both ways, it shouldn't matter. I invite you to take a look at the infographics below for a better understanding of how information is sent and received.

Your situation and your workflow is unique, that's the first point to consider when talking about EDI. And 4Psite has the knowledge of this type of connection like no other. By sharing it, we expect to break the misconceptions about EDI being too complex and too expensive for small and medium sized ecommerce businesses, and offer the guidance you must acquire to succeed in your one of a kind business.

Expertise in the nature of EDI is one of our strongest points and regardless of the size of your company, 4Psite can walk beside you in this journey.

Yochi Erez

4Psite, CEO

KPIs - How is your business doing?

Are you sure that you know how your business is performing? The main goal when managing a company is to get a hold of all aspects that make your business successful. For that, KPIs are a very important reporting tool to see the whole picture.

What if you could see a glance of how effective your supply chain is? How accurate and available your inventory is? What if you could measure your order fulfillment processes' efficiency, compare month to month changes and spot where action needs to be taken?

So many questions that need to be answered in a short period of time. To keep up with the fast- paced e-commerce environment, sometimes store owners feel like all information is there but not effectively or quickly enough to solve everyday questions. So, we'd like to introduce you to the KPI concept where all of this is possible thanks to the right, essential data for your business.

4Psite is the ultimate order management system and offers you KPIs to be seen anytime. Aside from being functional and automated, 4Psite is also a wide place for all types of reports. We keep your business thriving and we encourage you to use and extract all types of reports to keep moving forward.

So what are the relevant points you need to understand about your business today? 4Psite is always glad to help you in your journey to discover!

Photo: mentatdgt from Pexels

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4Psite is a multi-channel, cloud-based system with features such as inventory management, purchase management, manual orders module, shipping and much more. To discover all about 4Psite, visit our page.

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An open letter about EDI connections

Dealing with the challenges of the hyper-competitive ecommerce market in your daily routine is a lot. Technology is changing at a rapid speed and all of a sudden there are stronger ways to send information back and forth.

When it comes to ecommerce, API connections are the norm and they are widely supported, but what if you need to send and receive data in a different way?

Today, we'd like to talk about EDI connections. Does your business require this type of communication? Does your current system support it? EDI is the most popular integration protocol among large business entities and a more complex communication method that is required to achieve certain goals. You might need EDI to connect with sales channels/ large retailers or your dropshippers/ suppliers, for example. This is what we call bi-directional communication with EDI partners.

Two options are usually needed for EDI integration:

(a) when selling products on sales channels like Wayfair or Lowe's that will not enable businesses to sell on their platform unless they have an EDI integration.

(b) when sending orders to large suppliers for fulfillment (drop/shipping) or purchase orders. 4Psite's EDI integration is fully automated and our customers are actually handling the orders in the same way as other orders coming from regular sales channels (option a), or transmit the orders to their suppliers/ drop shippers in the same way as they would with a simple integration like email/ FTP (option b). Still speaking about EDI connections, we'd like to share with you one of our customers' success stories. It gives you a glimpse into their workflow and how 4Psite attends to their particular needs:

• Using 4Psite since 2018, the company sells sporting goods on several store platforms including Shopify, Magento, Amazon, Etsy, eBay and Wayfair.

• The integration with Wayfair is done via EDI, however order processing is standardized, allowing our customer to process all the orders in the same way.

• For order fulfillment, the company is using a 3PL (Third Party Fulfillment center) connected to 4Psite via EDI.

Since 2005, 4Psite keeps up with what’s new and is committed to improving the simple solutions that will take your business to the next level when it comes to efficiency. Are you interested in transforming your workflow into something easier, wiser and growing it to the level it truly belongs? 4Psite is ready to revolutionize your business today!

Best Regards. Yochi Erez - 4Psite Co-Founder and CEO