The Ongoing Relevance of EDI Part 2 – EDI in the 21st Century and Beyond

EDI Today

In our last post, we discussed the early years of EDI, looked at its adoption in the 1970’s, its early uses for both Supply Chain and Financial transactions, and its eventual rise to prominence by the end of the 20^th Century. By 2000, the massive popularity of the Internet and advancements in both Computing and Communications would open up huge opportunities for the users of EDI. Today, EDI has become much more affordable for those who, previously, could not afford it. Over the past decade of the 21^st Century, organizations of every size, no matter how small, can get into the EDI game and start to enjoy the benefits that only a select set of industries and organizations enjoyed only 10 or 20 years ago.

Simply put, the transformation of the technology operating infrastructure necessary for commerce to flourish has been re-defined by 21^st Century advancements driven primarily by the public Internet and IP-based networks.

This EDI trading transformation is now entrenched across many industries, as it has been re-architected and re-deployed as a widely consumable service on the public Internet, to the dismay of many pundits and gurus who had been claiming the death of EDI in its traditional form. Those who thought that the Internet, cloud computing, and new IP-based protocols would make EDI redundant couldn’t have been more wrong. EDI has adapted and flourished as the industry standard for B2B data collaboration in the modern information ecosystem and will continue to do so. In a nutshell, the Internet has only helped further proliferate the use and adoption of EDI by largely bringing down the costs and complexity to implement EDI within the small, midsize or large enterprise.

EDI for the Foreseeable Future

EDI service delivery has been completely re-engineered, adapted, and improved to take advantage of modern-day technological advancements in server computing and communications. It has become so deeply entrenched into all of our core computing and communication advancements and supporting technologies and practices, that the very base of successful operations are now an integral part of the way information technology will be consumed in the foreseeable future. Not only are Supply Chain and Finance departments feeling the benefits of EDI today but so are users in Sales, Marketing and IT. Hosted, or cloud computing-based deployments of EDI allow for business users to reap its benefits from a data integration & visibility perspective. Furthermore, IT departments benefit from both an ease-of-deployment & management perspective. Essentially, EDI is providing benefits across most if not all aspect of one’s business.

EDI is a unique weapon in that can have a positive impact on revenue growth, cost savings and customer satisfaction. The business case for EDI should include metrics improvement targets that address all three areas!

We all know that since the dawn of the computing and electronic age and now the Internet and eCommerce age, there has been a complete transformation in the technological world. For those who have maintained closeness to the advancements in our technology industry, know all too well, that some of the most remarkable innovations that are being unleashed in the global electronic game are the retrofitting of older technologies with the new forms of information technology management. (Think Mainframe interop with Web Services). This is also very true for EDI. The EDI standards and advancements since the 70’s and more so since the turn of the 21st century, are so great that their benefits can be expected for a long time to come.

But the real drivers for EDI adoption are not simply its ease of use and integration or its ability to adapt to the changing technological landscape. We’re in business after all. It is EDI’s newfound affordability and its ability to impact the bottom-line which are the real strengths of EDI from a buyer’s perspective.

Next week, we will take a look at some of the proof-points for EDI and how the cost of EDI has changed dramatically from the 1970’s to today.