Future of EDI

Since EDI was conceived by a group of visionaries long back, it went through a thorny path and ultimately won the peoples mind. It never looked back and over the years its popularity went multiplexed. It gained popularity when EDI transaction was made mandatory by some of the federal Governments.

The advantages of EDI are strong enough to predict the growth of this domain to multibillion dollar industry by year 2010. The two main reasons of EDI success story is given below:

• The use of Standards and Web is eliminating the traditional barriers for entry to EDI, such as large cost and trading volume requirements and proprietary software

• The electronic exchange of business documents offers many benefits to businesses both large and small, reducing costs, errors and it has environmental benefits too.

The benefit of EDI is very obvious and management needs to look beyond these to exploit the hidden benefits which electronic trading will open up. Trading opportunities which do not exist in the old paper world can be identified, with business information now available to be passed almost immediately between business partners irrespective of geographical boundaries - provided that the major companies take the lead in conforming to internationally recognised standards of data formats.

The future of EDI also depends on the use of Traditional EDI or Web-based EDI. The VAN provides more security than EDI over Internet. On the other hand, the Internet is cheaper and faster. Some VAN providers charge for each file that is stored in the VAN and sometimes for the length that it remains there. I am sure that in future, combination of both will create an ideal scenario in the coming future.
The EDI expansion will undoubtly continue and many users are expected to take benefit of EDI in the years ahead. API mapping will be simpler, and all the pieces including the database, gateway, and translator will all be included in one package. This will lead to a complete seamless integration to EDI. EDI is becoming more and more an integral part of the business strategy of companies and is invariably changing the way business is done. It may so happen that there might be a day when a business-house will refuse to serve others because they don’t support EDI facilities. Trading partners are offering discounts to their customers if they opt for business over EDI, the reason being economic viability for both the Partners.
We as EDI professionals, suggest that the decision to trade electronically and the level of subsequent exploitation should be taken to the managerial level and the understanding of EDI benefits and use of Standards can only enhance the growth of this niche domain.