When you send or receive transactional data such as orders, order confirmations, dispatch advice, or invoices you want to be sure you send or receive consistent and correct information to/from your business partners.
However, we often see that within organisations several IT applications are used for processing data. When these applications are not integrated, relevant information and data are spread across the organisation. This blog highlights the risks of a fragmented IT landscape and how you can prevent this:
Fragmentation of data
The highest risk of a fragmented IT-landscape is that relevant data is spread across the organisation. This eventually will lead to the following:
- No insight into the quality of your data: As data is stored in separate systems, you won’t have any insight into the quality of your data. Changes are that not every system is up-to-date or that your data is not processed according to the right standard. With incorrect data, there is no interpretation of accurate information so management can’t make correct and swift strategic decisions.
- High chance of errors: The chance of errors increases when data is spread across the organisation. When incorrect information is used it is likely that this could lead to incorrect orders, or sending wrong invoices.
- Less able to meet your KPIs: When you do business, you make agreements with your business partners. With every partner, you determine, for example, how many goods you deliver and in which frequency. However, when your data is fragmented, you are less able to meet your KPIs as it is hard to monitor and measure your activities and performance of your business.
Integration of data and systems
Fragmentation of IT applications and data can be prevented by creating a single source of truth by integrating your systems. The advantage of having integrated systems is that applications share data between separate systems automatically ensuring that your data is up-to-date and reliable. In most cases, an ERP-system is used for this purpose – by automating business processes, the exchange of data is faster, safer and without errors.
But how do you make sure the right data is used for your business transactions? Using an EDI system for sending transactional data has serious benefits for your organisation. Because documents are created from a standardised format, messages can be exchanged easily from machine to machine. Most EDI systems are integrated into ERP-systems – enabling data to be processed and stored automatically within internal IT systems.
Furthermore, business intelligence enables you to monitor and analyze EDI transactions. You obtain real-time information and insight into your supply chain. This enables you to make better business decisions faster, spot potential issues and improve the relationship with your business partners.
Want to know more about EDI?
Want to know more about EDI, and why you should use it? Watch our short video about EDI and learn why you need to use it, what the benefits are and what you need to get started.