EDI Implementation Guidelines for Retail EDI Communications
Author: Paula Giovannetti, Supply Chain Best Practices Adviser
For those of you not familiar with the Retail Value Chain Federation, it is a 22-year-old organization that brings retailers, suppliers and solution providers together to help them address their business priorities and become more collaborative trading partners. They do this through conferences, education and research. They also have regular open forums, including a quarterly teleconference on EDI.
RVCF has identified a need for business process guidelines. The EDI Implementation Guidelines we’ve had in the past focused on a specific EDI transaction, with a few use cases for that transaction. They were written for the EDI Analyst. The business process guidelines will cover a specific business activity and the digital communications tools used for that activity, including EDI.
Mission Statement
The mission of the RVCF Business Process Guidelines for Digital Communications / EDI is twofold. The first is to provide guidelines for a specific retail business process relative to EDI and other digital workflow. This gives business operations the information needed to understand capabilities and communicate their requirements to intra-company business partners, inter-company trading partners and solution providers. In the process, we will identify the best business practices. The second goal is to streamline and harmonize the language used, including standardizing terms, codes, definitions and actions expected for the data qualifiers used, whether in EDI or other forms of digital communications.
It should be noted that RVCF is not “setting standards”; they are helping retailers and suppliers understand and effectively use existing standards. Any recommended changes to X.12 EDI or GS1-US standards will be communicated to the appropriate standards body.
Topics for future Business Process Guidelines include the PO Change process, Item Setup, and Deduction Reason Codes.
To learn more about the work group, please contact Susan Haupt (shaupt@rvcf.com) or Paula Giovannetti (pgiovannetti@rvcf.com). Our next Work Group meeting will be at the RVCF Fall Conference in Scottsdale on October 30th.
The first guideline will cover error prevention and notification for shipping and receiving, specifically for the EDI 856 Ship Notice (ASN) and shipping labels. We focus on the role EDI translators play in error prevention and explain what the 997 Acknowledgement can and cannot do. We provide the type of EDI information needed by the business to better communicate within their company and with their trading partners.
The ASN error reports sent to suppliers come in various digital forms. EDI is not widely used in this part of the process. We are currently gathering error codes from our suppliers and retailers to create a harmonized list with definitions and ways to fix the issues. Ship Notice error reports are communicated via email, portals, scorecards, deductions and EDI. The code list we identify can be used in any of these forms of digital communication.
Once a supplier can compile data using harmonized codes, they can analyze the information to determine root cause. The real value in this work will be to help all parties fix the problems that so severely affect supply chain efficiency.