Electronic Data Interchange
From TriasWiki
|
| This page is OK |
Contents |
Definition/short description
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a set of standards for structuring information to be electronically exchanged between and within businesses, organizations, government entities and other groups. The standards describe structures that emulate documents, for example purchase orders to automate purchasing.
Introductory
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards describe structures that emulate documents, for example purchase orders to automate purchasing. The term EDI is also used to refer to the implementation and operation of systems and processes for creating, transmitting, and receiving EDI documents.
EDI standards were designed to be independent of communication and software technologies. EDI can be transmitted using any methodology agreed to by the sender and recipient. This includes a variety of technologies, including modem (asynchronous, and bisynchronous), FTP, e-mail, HTTP, etc.
In depth, relevance to eGovernment
EDI is used for electronic funds transfer between financial institutions, which facilitates such common transactions as the direct deposit of payroll checks by employers, the direct debit of consumer accounts to make mortgage or utility payments, and the electronic payment of federal taxes by businesses. Another common application of EDI involves the direct exchange of standard business transaction documents - such as purchase orders, invoices, and bills of lading - from one business to another via computer. EDI is also used by retail businesses as part of their electronic scanning and point-of-sale inventory replenishment systems. Overall, EDI offers a number of benefits to businesses and, thanks to the rapid evolution of the related technology, is becoming more readily available to small businesses all the time.
EDI documents generally contain the same information that would normally be found in a paper document used for the same organizational function. For example an EDI 940 ship-from-warehouse order is used by a manufacturer to tell a warehouse to ship product to a retailer. It typically has a ship to address, bill to address, a list of product numbers and quantities.
Organizations that send or receive documents from each other are referred to as "trading partners" in EDI terminology. The trading partners agree on the specific information to be transmitted and how it should be used. This is done in human readable specifications (also called EDI Implementation Guidelines).
For more information see the Wikipedia article
