Integration with EDI Compliant with Amazon has become almost essential for every business nowadays. Irrespective of its size, every firm desire to adopt EDI to improve its processes and boost productivity. Even the global retail giant Amazon is heavily emphasizing leveraging the advantages of ‘EDI Compliant’.
Indeed, today, Amazon is considered the most prominent online retail platform across the globe. It facilitates the selling of a wide variety of products right from daily essentials to home furniture to industrial tools. Also, it offers numerous services such as video/music streaming, bill payments, cash transactions, and many more.
Currently, Amazon has more than 300 million active users globally, and over 100 million Prime users. Also, more than 25,000 sellers are actively engaged on Amazon in selling their products and services. As per the industry insights, Amazon holds a significant amount of market share in the global online business.
The large customer base, user-friendly platform, simple listing/selling process, multiple payment options, and highly-admirable support keep attracting sellers from all over the world. Also, it is a well-known fact that most of the firms, small or large-scaled, are trying to enlist themselves on this platform owing to these benefits.
What is EDI compliant with Amazon?
To streamline its transactions with vendors/sellers, Amazon offers a powerful and effective EDI solution for them. It establishes proper communication between the Amazon Vendor Interface and vendors’ business solutions. Most importantly, the best thing is, Amazon does not charge any kind of fees for this.
Why do vendors need this EDI integration?
The integration of EDI assists in maximum leveraging of the above-mentioned benefits offered by the Amazon to its sellers or vendors.
- To streamline communication between their business systems and Amazon Vendor Central EDI, the exchange of important business documents becomes very much easier.
- To eliminate the paperwork involved in the selling of products in bulk. The EDI simplifies the entire process of getting orders from Amazon, processing them, dispatching invoices, and settling payments.
- To handle bulk inventory and access clear visibility to the real-time data. As the EDI facilitates quick entering of data, bulk inventories can be easily updated without spending much time on it. This offers a clear view of the current status of product inventories
- To minimize human errors during the entering of data into different systems and/or updating the inventories by automating the processes
- To generate quick responses whenever an order gets placed on Amazon. The EDI increases the efficiency of the selling process and ensures on-time order delivery. As a result, satisfied customers post positive reviews and feedback on the product listing page. It helps to increase SEO scores as well as Amazon performance ratings.
- In the case of wholesale sellers, to manage multiple product listings, inventories, payments, etc.
Which are the major Amazon EDI Documents?
EDI X12 documents
- EDI 810 – Invoice
- EDI 846 – Inventory Status
- EDI 850 – Purchase Order message
- EDI 855 – Purchase Order Acknowledgement
- EDI 856 – Advance Ship Notice
- EDI 860 – Order Change Notification
Edifact (EDI) documents
- Purchase Orders – ORDERS
- Advance Shipment Notice – DESADV
- Purchase Order Acknowledgements – ORDRSP
- Invoice – INVOICE
- Cost & inventory feed – INVRPT
- Point of Sale – SLSRPT
- AS2 transfer protocol
What are the benefits of becoming an Amazon seller?
Let’s have a quick look at some benefits of selling your products on Amazon. They are
- Larger customer base:
Today, Amazon sells almost anything and everything. It offers thousands of products in different categories at reasonable prices. Next, there come heavy discounts, free shipping, and quick delivery.
These attributes not only prompt existing customers to invest in more products but also attracts new customers towards Amazon. As a result, on one hand, Amazon’s customer base expands significantly every day, and on the other hand, over 1000 different products get sold daily. So, if a product is listed on Amazon, it will get higher market exposure while its selling chances increase to a great extent.
- Fulfillment By Amazon:
Amazon facilitates hassle-free selling of products to its sellers by offering them Fulfillment by Amazon or FBA service. Across the world, it has built a well-facilitated warehouses in strategic locations where the seller’s products will be stored properly. When a customer places an order for a specific product, Amazon picks up the product from the warehouse located nearby the customer’s address. Then, it packs, ships, and delivers the item within the scheduled time. It also provides quick customer support and handles all the related queries for this product. More importantly, this service is even applicable to Amazon Prime users. All the seller needs to do is to just subscribe to the FBA service and keep paying a certain amount as fees for every month.
- Quick payment settlements
Amazon is widely known for fast settling of the payments linked with the product selling. It directly transfers the amount received by selling a product to the bank account specified in the Seller Central weekly. In case of any query, the Amazon support system is available for 24*7. However, for this, the seller must own a valid bank account and provide the correct information in Amazon Seller Central.
Apart from these, Amazon also offers many perks for its sellers, for instance, it assists in promoting the products globally at reasonable expenses. It also provides effective options like Amazon Buy Box, Gift Vouchers, Seasonal Sales, etc., to increase the sales of products. Moreover, it offers a user-friendly interface to enhance the customer shopping experience. As a result, customers prefer the Amazon website more as compared to other online shopping sites to fulfill their needs.
How to become an Amazon seller?
Becoming an Amazon seller is quite an easy task. The sellers must register and get access to Amazon Seller Central. All the important information linked to the active bank accounts and tax payments (GST and PAN numbers) should be provided for this.
Then, the sellers need to list their products in the appropriate categories and ensure easy searching for their products on the website. They can make use of Amazon Listing Tool, Amazon Listing Software, or Seller App. In addition to this, they are also allowed to hire external professionals to improve the output of their product listings pages.
When the sellers start selling, Amazon offers many advantages as explained in the above section. Amazon puts all the efforts to deliver the orders to the customers within the promised time. However, the sellers must comply with Amazon’s terms and conditions.
In addition to this, Amazon also offers another facility for vendors or individual wholesale sellers. With it, the sellers or vendors can directly sell their products to Amazon at a mutually agreed price. Amazon will sell these products to its customers and manages all the shipping process itself. More importantly, it will only decide the profit margin for each product and the seller/vendor will not get any share in the overall profit. It is up to the sellers/vendors to decide which way to opt for selling their products.
What is Amazon Vendor Central?
Any wholesale vendors can sell their products directly to Amazon through Vendor Central (those who receive Amazon invitations). Amazon sends a purchase order list mentioning the details of all the products that it wants to buy. The sellers will revert by sending the products mentioned in the list immediately. After receiving the shipments, Amazon settles down the payment amounts and completes the transactions.
How can Amazon vendors use EDI integration?
Amazon vendors EDI can integrate in three different ways, for example,
- EDI connection for a single document:
The vendors can make use of EDI for exchanging even one document, for instance, Purchase Order or Invoice. Also, they can generate invoices and send them through EDI quickly
- EDI connection with an ERP system:
The vendors who adopted EPRs such as SAP or NetSuite can integrate with EDI. By doing so, they can process their orders within their ERP system instead of Amazon Vendor portal
- EDI connection with an OMS:
The vendors who don’t use any ERP or who utilizes multiple sales channels can set up an EDI connection within their order management system
If you are one of the registered vendors or individual sellers who sell products to Amazon in bulk, then the adoption of an EDI is a better option. It not only streamlines your order process but also reduces the amount of time that’s usually taken in case of large order volumes, significantly. Therefore, invest in EDI, achieve EDI compliance with Amazon, and extend your business, successfully.
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