Role of EDI Translation and Validation in EDI Integration Services

WebBee Global
4 min readMar 10, 2021

--

EDI Integration Services

In the set of services being offered under EDI software integration by an EDI Software company, EDI translation and EDI Validation are important component that should not be missed by a trading partners when getting EDI integrated with their business systems. Since EDI in existence for five decades, yet carrying out successful EDI transaction with several stakeholders at a same time is a big riddle for every business that is either large or small.

Establishing EDI connection between system already being big challenge in an EDI integration, the usage of different data standards and formats between trading partners only complicate EDI integration process. However, answer to the data uniformity across entire business system lies with EDI translation and validation.

How various data standards and formats makes data sharing complicated?

Since the advent of EDI around five decades back streamlining an EDI across multiple endpoints is a complicated business process and activity. As many as endpoints are there, as many EDI transactions will be further accommodated with data standards and formats to be harmonized. It further creates an opportunity, where, data quality is need to improved for accuracy due to data error on account of massive number of data transactions being carried out. The process begins with connecting the legacy EDI systems with cloud-based applications through APIs (Application Programming Interface).

EDI Data Standards and Data Formats

EDIFACT is the most popular EDI integration standard that is further also said to be as EDI by many experts. EDIFACT that was developed as a data standard for EDI transaction has its further sub versions as well. Some important features of data standards and formats are:-

• EDIFACT has different versions of its standards. EDIFACT is popular in EUROPE. ANSI X12 is widely accepted in United States and Asia. The other popular EDI versions are EANCOM, HIPAA, ODETTE, RosettaNet, SWIFT, TRADACOMS, VDA and VICS.

• The next important data integration issue arises from the different data standards used across different industries. Hence, the data formats there also happen to be exclusive according to their industry type. The significant differences will also lie according to different data fields used by them.

• Many organizations word accordingly to their proprietary data formats that also raises accuracy issues during exchange of business documents.

• With span of time newer data formats are emerging every day like XML and Jason that are also required to match with EDI integration process.

EDI Translation & EDI mapping

The EDI translation and mapping most importantly is being carried out to ensure the data accuracy of documents standards used by different enterprises during the EDI integration process. For smooth communication all the data points are required to be mapped for uniformity. Along the synchronizing data for uniformity, the next important point for a data to be mapped in a specific manner and tune. The translation experience is, therefore, needed by every EDI integration service provider. It should how to convert data from EDIFACT to XML.

What is an EDI validation and why it is necessary for EDI software integration?

Across the steps of EDI integration between trading partners and supplies, the worn out and poor quality of data makes a negative impact on overall productivity of a business. The very big reason to have an EDI integrated into a business system loses its objective through poor data quality. To fulfill the goal of good, reliable and satisfactory data quality an EDI service provider offers an extreme level data alignment between sender and receiver’s data transactions for improved business processing and efficiency.

In the situation, EDI validation plays an important role in regulating the data processing in B2B integration and improve the data accuracy and its quality. EDI validation is an automated data transfer process that is executed and being carried out before translation part. The EDI validation catches error through and across EDI integration and rejects them to be further processed. An EDI validation keeps on rejecting a flawed unless it is accurate and worth processing.

Know More About: What business benefits does EDI outsourcing provide to a business?

How Does EDI validation is being carried out by EDI Software Company?

The EDI validation that is a sure certain method for an EDI integration to ascertain its data efficacy and accuracy for data transactions to be more effective and smooth. The steps that are included into EDI integration services are:-

• Setting the position of data segments to be carried out to be in correct order.

• All the important data elements are included into an EDI event and the unnecessary are left out.

• The validation process checks out that data elements has all the requisite minimum and maximum length for data.

• The validation checks out whether the group of segments are repeated than specified level of times.

• Syntax rules of the data segments, therefore and enforced and used.

• It, therefore, maintains the different semantic references.

• Based on the code list ensuring that a code used in the message is valid.

• Using value reference and value list to define the allowed values for specific data elements.

Conclusion:

Thus, the role an EDI integration services is just not limited only to have a supplier communication between trading partners to be carried out smoothly, instead, its role extend beyond the merely exchange of documents between trading partners. EDI integration for document exchange for several trading partners is being regulated by translations and validations.

--

--

WebBee Global

WebBee Global, is a leading eCommerce Integration service provider having an experienced team. Integrations like EDI , Amazon FBA, Ecommerce store design etc.