Tensoft’s customers sometimes require EDI integration as part of their overall ERP/supply chain system. (EDI is Electronic Data Interchange – a B2B standard that has been in place for a long time.) Some Tensoft customers require automated creation of sales orders and invoicing using EDI to deal with their customers. This is particularly useful in the sales cycle where Tensoft users create sales orders in Tensoft DemandOps, then generate an invoice, finalize the invoice, and send the invoice to their customers.
The way this integration works is that an EDI customer will send a sales order or a purchase order to Tensoft customer in the form of an EDI 850 standard file. This standard file is processed by Tensoft’s integration engine, and automatically creates a sales order in DemandOps. The user can then review it and issue a sales order acknowledgement from DemandOps. That acknowledgement is then processed by the integration engine and an EDI 855 notification is sent to the EDI customer. The customer’s EDI system can then process that and recognize that the purchase order has been received and acknowledged by the vendor.
As the sales order progresses through the scheduling and shipment process and the shipment is finalized, the end user in Demandops creates and finalizes the invoice. When that step is completed, an automatic notification goes to the EDI customer using the EDI 810 notification standard. This lets the end customer know that: a) the order has been fulfilled; b) this is the amount owed; and c) all the details including part numbers and invoice number, quantity and dollar amounts and so on.
One of the key benefits is that this is a paperless transaction. It eliminates the manual effort to create the sales order and improves efficiency. Electronic data interchange comes in with a purchase order, sales order acknowledgement goes out electronically, and at the time of fulfillment after the invoice has been created, a paperless invoice goes back to the end customer.
With your ERP integration in place, the final invoice can also be sent to your ERP system. This is an additional benefit if you also have an ERP integration.
Things You Need to Consider:
You need to think about the volume of information you expect from your end customers and how quickly your sales organizations can process and manage these incoming orders. Tensoft can process data every minute, but we recommend that you look at your internal business processes and then define the frequency of processing the interchange for both incoming and outgoing data.
In addition to the electronic message going back to the end customer, some of our customers like to have Excel spreadsheets as attachments to be distributed internally within their organization. So, if you need specific kind of information to be emailed as part of your 855 EDI and 810 EDI, you need to think about customizations.
To learn more about Tensoft and its solutions, contact us today!