EDI business document Error Handling
The Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) assists in the exchange process of important business documents. It smoothly replaces the paper-based process and easily carries out all the business transactions. There is no restriction on the total number of trading partners and transactions for any EDI integration.
But, when the number of transactions and trading partners is high across the supply chain, then there is a good chance for error generation. The reasons can be many and they might differ from each other in their basic nature. For instance, maybe a field in the specified section of the product description or the shipment is empty. There may be the presence of an invalid value or duplicate entry in any field. Or else, someone at the receiving end might have changed the password of the FTP address in their server. These are only a few common examples to mention.
Our cutting-edge EDI Error Handling management detects errors before processing any transaction. It immediately notifies the responsible person and prevents wastage of time that usually takes place in finding the right person to inform. As a result, there will be ample time available for the correction of the errors.
For example, consider there is an error that gets created during an invoice generation. The error management team identifies that error and quickly notify the related trading partner. Then, your firm’s EDI integration-support team assigns the correction task to the liable person of the Accounting Department. The entire process consumes a lot of valuable time in-between. In this case, if the person who is in charge of the invoicing process would be notified directly, then a lot of time could have been saved.
But, before discussing our error handling method, it is very important to understand the nature of various errors. So, let’s study the different types of errors that usually occur during the electronic exchange of business documents.
- Absence of mandatory data
- Incompatible data structure
- Changing of FTP password
- Expiration of AS2 certification
Now, let’s understand how our dynamic EDI integration solution assists in correcting errors. Our highly expert team will offer support for every step across the document exchange process.
The most important thing in the error correction process is notifying the right person at the right. Our team will ask your firm to reserve a person for handling EDI errors across the supply chain. You will have complete authority over this decision. Your firm can choose a department that acts as a link between you and its trading partner. Also, it can select its own EDI-support team. Or else, it can elect a tech-person from its IT department who is keen on handling network errors. Otherwise, it can also select a group of persons for this purpose instead of a single person.
Our expert team will send an error notification to the related person in your firm through text or emails. The content of this notification would be:
- Type of error
- Link providing all the information about this failed transaction
- Recommended corrective action
Apart from notifying errors, our expert team will also send alerts about certain transactions known as “non-events”. A non-event refers to a transaction that should have taken place but did not for some reason.
For example:
“We are aware that we are scheduled to receive 1000 invoices from your end before 10 AM on every working day”.
Our team will send a notification to the trading partner, in case, it observes the total number of invoices that were generated at their systems is less than 1000. Thereby, it provides an opportunity for the trading partner to correct the error or else cancel the transaction. But, if the related person does not respond properly, then our team will notify directly to the concerned firm.
Apart from identifying and correcting errors, our highly-skilled team will also keep a watch on your firm’s entire EDI setup. The servers, disks, networks, databases, etc.,