EDI/Messaging

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Overview

Industry Situation

Over the years EDI has morphed into many different forms. Trying to fit a single solution into many different situations has necessitated the management of redundant standards such as X-12, EDIFACT, and others. As a result, companies supporting EDI are often forced to adopt multiple systems in order to comply with each of their customers. In effect, every company has had to create multiple, customer specific infrastructures to maintain trading activities. Along with that, many companies are forced to manage processes for which they are ill equipped, such as registration, partner management, and infrastructure up-keep.

The problem is getting larger. The automotive industry has been increasing its use of EDI by 20% per year and this is projected to continue into the future (source: AMR, 2003).

 
What's Wrong with current approaches?

1. The current EDI methodology has resulted in an everybody-to-everybody deployment methodology where each company establishes a unique connection with each of their trading partners.
   
   
2. The automotive industry has unique needs (when compared to other industries) and over time there have been many different attempts to address these needs with a multitude of format standards, often by individual companies.
   
   
3. Managing the EDI infrastructure has become time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. Most importantly, it creates no strategic advantage.
   
   

 
Solution
The solution is outsourcing the EDI and electronic messaging infrastructure and focusing more attention on using the business information that you exchange to create strategic advantage. Companies today are looking for a simple, cost-effective EDI solution that will enable them to effortlessly communicate with their trading partners. Covisint Connect provides a single connection type that makes the most sense for your business and eliminates the need for maintaining individual trading partner formats. Covisint Connect is a service based on a standard format that the major industry players have agreed to deploy which will eliminate the need for translating in the future. And finally, Covisint Connect provides automotive specific functionality that enables things like message prioritization and customized routing rules that will deliver the most important information faster.

This solution is called Covisint Connect. Learn more about Covisint Connect.

Next: Covisint Connect