EDI Workforce: Personnel And Training Needs
Personnel from various company functional 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 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. The same applies to many other departments such as hipping and logistics, human resources, and finance.
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 or a 15 person EDI team. This depends on the size of the organization and its use 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. The EDI coordinator role should be very well-known and visible throughout the organization. This EDI team will be in almost daily 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 umbrella and will most likely report to the IT manager.
Basic and regular EDI training is critical for any company with implemented EDI solution. It can be a basic course for the staff not deeply involved in EDI operations but dealing with it anyway. Or it can be a advanced training for personnel involved in mapping, specifications, partner integration, documents operation etc.
At EDI Academy we offer courses for various EDI levels. You can choose an on-site training, live webinar or order a private session for your team.