Freeing Your Organization From Its EDI Mapping Nightmares By Jim Frome, strategy officer & executive vice president of SPS Commerce

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers face a double-edged sword when dealing with big box stores. Of course they want to grow their business and sell to the big-name retailers, yet owning and maintaining the necessary Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) software to interface with these large and complex organizations can break the bank. All transactions with retail customers must be mapped to the retailers' exact standards, and those standards are continually in flux. These intricate maps are at the heart of the retail supply chain, but without a way to adapt them in real time, manufacturers are bogged down with unnecessary costs, chargebacks, and time delays. Beyond the steep EDI software and hardware costs, the technical expertise required to continually program, revise, and maintain EDI maps is extremely expensive.

Moreover, retailers often change mapping rules with little or no notice to manufacturers. Even the slightest change to an EDI map has major ramifications. If a retailer isn't aware that goods are coming, for example, they may refuse shipments. With no warning of impending changes, manufacturers inevitably ship materials with mapping errors, and incur huge costs when the materials are turned away or delayed at the shipping dock.