All companies large or small that sell product on-line or for warehouse fulfillment to retailers and e-tailers eventually find themselves in a position where they need to rely on EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to communicate with them.  But does EDI really have a sustainable future? 

Probably – for a while – there’s certainly a large EDI industry out there that is doing quite well charging you fees per 100 characters for transmitting and translating data for your business. 

However, this is one of OPAL’s distinguishing characteristics– the OPAL solution has an inbuilt EDI engine that does NOT charge for EDI transmission, as well as providing touchless, self-driving (autonomous) order processing on a 24×7 basis. 

OPAL is even prepared for the future with an Application Program Interface (API).  APIs are a messaging format that allows data to be transmitted from one system to another in nanoseconds WITHOUT those expensive EDI Document fees.  Because of the Internet, the speed of data transmission has increased by a 100 fold today.

While EDI has continued to play a significant role over the last five (5) decades, business processes have changed.  The only thing that has not changed is EDI and the Industry that continues to promote it.   

Given all of that, everybody wonders why do we still need EDI?  The answer is simple – resistance to change. Traditional businesses have been using it for so long that they no longer question it.  EDI companies, on the other hand, cannot change without destroying their revenue stream. 

It’s important to note, though, that a growing number of your retail sales channels have implemented APIs that can be used by their suppliers if you’re ready to use it.  OPAL makes you ready.

Unlike the old days when you were shipping large pallet orders a few times per month, the transition to drop ship orders can be pretty traumatic.  The pain extends all the way from order processing where you are now going through the same old steps, but for potentially 100s or 1,000s of orders per day.

Then you can add in the compliance requirements your trading partners have surrounding acknowledgements, ship notices, inventory feeds, etc., etc., and their branding requirements.  Not to mention mounting chargebacks if something isn’t done perfectly. 

And, lastly, there’s the chaos it creates in your warehouse or 3PL because the warehouse layout and optimal picker and packer productivity needed to handle large numbers of small parcel shipments is so entirely different from normal pallet shipments.

All in all, this makes adequate profit hard to achieve…especially with small basket size orders.  Trading Partner portals, EDI companies, ERPs and Shipping Platforms certainly ease some of the workload, but there are still a lot of steps that require a human being to sit at a keyboard and make the next step happen.  And Heaven forbid that they make a data entry error along the way!

Consider this scenario…OPAL removes ALL of the manual steps required to process orders, completes all of the transactions required by for over 70 top retailers and e-tailers, is compliant with ALL of their requirements and has the capability to increase warehouse shipment productivity by 25%-50% if needed.

Below is one common example of how it increases profitability just in the drop ship order processing realm.  And this doesn’t even include the time spend at the end of each day to upload your inventory feeds to your Trading Partners or lost warehouse productivity.  Your individual situation may vary, but you’ll get the idea….