EDI Workforce

Personnel from various function areas will one way or another be involved with EDI. For example, the accounts payable manager or clerk should be familiar with EDI operations if EDI invoicing is in place. The procurement manager or the buyer should be very well aware of EDI operations if the Purchase Orders are transmitted electronically. The IT personnel will be heavily involved with EDI in order to support the infrastructure. Same can apply to many other departments such as shipping and logistics, human resources, finance and etc.

However, an EDI coordinator role should exist. The usage of this role varies in organizations. The EDI team can consist of a part time person doing EDI for couple of hours a week to a 15 people EDI team. All this depends on the size of the organization and its usage of EDI. Typically, there will be one EDI coordinator or one EDI Team as the focal point of contact to support EDI operations. The responsibilities of this team will be to add and maintain trading partners, solve day-to-day issues that arise and maintain and update the system. Typically the EDI coordinator role will be very well-known in the organization by most departments. This EDI team will also, almost daily be in touch with the company's trading partners. Typically the EDI coordinator role, whether it's a team or just one part time person will be placed under the Information Technology or the umbrella and will most likely report to the IT Manager.