Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Business The Importance of EDI The Importance of EDI To stay competitive in today's global economy, businesses are being forced to re-evaluate the way they do business with their customers and their vendors. We cannot afford to close our eyes to advances in technology in the way many businesses have done in the past and continue to do even now. It is a question of do it or die in the competitive world of products and services where the well informed and the technologically equipped will reap the rewards of success. Our company is already behind others in technology and efficiency by not having EDI. Without EDI, our internal processes have poor response times, excessive paperwork floating around and potential errors that should not be necessary as well as wasting personnel time doing a work that could be automated. When business begins to trade or share core information, the return of technological investment is clear and then we realize the true value of EDI. We should not stay behind our competitors and should start now a process of implementing EDI in our company, improving our efficiency and productivity, and reach higher levels of customer satisfaction. When EDI is used as a tool to enable process change and help achieve business goals, significant benefits can be reached. EDI enhances all parts of the business process, and we would expect some impacts, such as: · Reduced Process-Time: the need to send and receive information is crucial in today’s business world. With EDI, data can be sent and received in seconds and 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, thus allowing business to continue outside the normal business day, and the turnaround time for a business transaction can be reduced from days to hours and, in some instances, to minutes or even seconds. · Increased Efficiency: the major part of data entry tasks is generated from a computer. When companies develop compatible electronic documents, data is never copied, re-keyed, or manually filed, freeing employees for more important activities, eliminating tedious work and reducing the risk of human error. · Optimized Inventory: managing inventory is a critical issue for any business. EDI can provide faster and more accurate information about production, buying and delivery needs. It is a link between customer, seller and vendor thus leading to improved inventory management and reduction in inventory levels. For initial EDI projects, limited objectives with perceivable benefits should be our first step. If we select, for our first project an ambitious plan to completely overtake our entire retail distribution process, we will be attempting a too large step and the probability is that we fail right away and waste all the money invested in the project. A more realistic initial project would be to automate one of our high turnover inventory order processes, along with providing order confirmations and delivery notifications. We should choose one big vendor that already has EDI implemented, so we do not need to develop a whole new process for both companies. They can help us in this first step, leaving us with a very limited risk. The success of this project will surely be a big step towards the future of EDI in our company. Much of the work of implementing EDI, or any new process, can be eased if we define our objectives very carefully. EDI is a process that will affect many parts of the organization. Communication is crucial and all concerned parties at all steps must participate and develop a good working relationship with all people affected, so the newly installed EDI changes the way business is done and not disrupt it. One of the best ways to provide good communication in a project is to define a coordinator position that should be filled with an individual with strong knowledge of EDI development and implementation. It is important to know that EDI is only a tool. If that tool is implemented without carefully defining objectives, it will not meet our expectations. As mentioned before, if that tool is applied to the wrong process, it can disrupt business processes and frustrate its users, as well as complicate the business. A carefully considered implementation plan is a very useful tool with great power, adding speed and improving accuracy in any business. However, it can go far beyond that in opening new sources of information to a business, and open a whole new world to our company. Bibliography: National Institute of Standards and Technology: www.nist.gov EAN Brazil: www.eanbrasil.org.br Word Count: 736
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