In recent years, organizations have faced a series of disruptions, impacting their operational continuity, resulting in lost sales, reduced revenues, and damage to brand reputation. This has heightened the importance for supply chain leaders to adeptly manage inherent risks by leveraging capabilities for accurate decision-making and utilizing data for improved planning.

The looming threats of shifting trade alliances, geopolitical conflicts, climate change effects on global logistics networks, and ongoing labor unrest weigh heavily on executive leaders’ minds. To tackle future uncertainties, logistics leaders are prioritizing resilient operations and flexible transportation solutions, aligning with diverse procurement strategies and meeting the demands of increasingly discerning customers.

According to IDC’s Global Supply Chain Survey 2023, business leaders, especially in transportation and logistics, prioritize improved visibility, agility, and increased collaboration. The impact of disruptions has prompted a notable focus on deploying advanced analytics to navigate changing conditions effectively.

Logistics service providers must also respond effectively to frequent and significant changes, while also balancing the push for resilient operations with the need to reduce and control costs. Economic conditions are driving concerns about higher and out-of-control costs, leading logistics teams to seek a competitive edge through efficiency gains.

Technological priorities for advancing supply chain digital maturity include artificial intelligence/machine learning, cloud platforms, and visibility platforms. Clean, timely visibility data is foundational for cultivating intelligence, enabling logistics providers to make informed, timely decisions and engage in scenario planning to drive optimal actions.

Continuous refinement of models to incorporate new data sources is also crucial for better business outcomes. Top priorities for logistics service providers include optimizing the supply chain to reduce costs and improving visibility across the end-to-end supply chain. Challenges such as generating efficiencies, facilitating better collaboration, and advancing sustainability drive the need for data-driven insights.

As organizations address inherent risks in global supply chains in 2024, the need for flexible transportation services with advanced intelligence becomes evermore crucial. Timely, informed, and consistent decision-making across complex logistics networks requires end-to-end visibility and collaboration. Logistics service providers play a critical role in achieving supply chain resilience, and platforms like PartnerLinQ enable them to deliver value, streamline operations, and contribute to long-term partnerships with customers. In a world where collaboration is essential, interconnected systems that provide insights from a single source of truth become highly valuable, paving the way for deeply integrated and resilient transportation operations aligned with customer supply chain strategies.

Learn more about PartnerLinQ and the ways of solving the supply chain challenges for both Transportation and Logistics Providers in our new IDC Spotlight Whitepaper.

The global supply chains are becoming more volatile than ever. Customer expectations are shifting, triggering modern technology adoption for many enterprises. Difficulties in onboarding trading partners further add to the struggle. What are the possible types of EDI solutions to address the matter of exchanging EDI transactions holistically, and do these various types of EDI solutions include other things, such as different types of EDI Transactions? 

An effective Electronic Data Interchange Solution simplifies the exchange of electronic documents among partners through system and app integrations and cultivates collaboration via EDI and non-EDI exchange. As a result, the solution packages and delivers visibility, control, and optimization. In simple terms, it’s a feature-packed solution that enables intelligent decision-making in real-time. While these EDI technology solutions are critical to driving tangible business outcomes, particularly in recent years, the decision process is complex at the same time. This is why parties investigating Electronic Data Interchange Solutions must have a relatively deep understanding of the different types of EDI solutions before investing.

Identifying the Best Electronic Data Interchange System

The best way to develop a sound understanding is to start right from the beginning. EDI solution providers are organizations that offer EDI software and services to companies looking for data exchange services, in short, a solution to assist with the transportation, transformation, and integration of trade. EDI systems, from this perspective, help you seamlessly exchange business documents between your partners by leveraging an EDI solution which could be on-premises or cloud-based. Some are provided as managed, while others are self-service. The solution ensures completeness, data validity, and security.

Before we proceed, it is critical to understand the types of EDI solution providers in the market so that you can identify the best electronic data interchange system.

Types of EDI Solution Providers

There are five types of EDI solution providers offering one or more types of EDI solutions. In addition to services, they also differ in terms of industries and the business size they cater to. Take a look at these to identify which type will work best for your enterprise.

1. EDI Broker

An EDI broker typically provides a comprehensive set of EDI solutions. They offer value-added network (VAN) connections and, at the same time, help companies connect to particular trading partners or networks.  EDI brokers typically do not have their own network; instead, they serve in the capacity of an outsourced EDI staff, typically focusing on one or several industries. They provide everything from data entry to data translation services, ensuring that your EDI documents are transformed from your core systems to that of your partners while adhering to customer requirements and guidelines for various standards. 

An EDI broker ensures that any company and startup, in particular, can easily share EDI documents with their partners without investing a great deal or compromising security. EDI brokers most often assist when a trading partner lacks EDI software of their own, and a few EDI brokers even support non-EDI formats. EDI brokers are typically engaged with the market where revenue is at the lower end of the industry spectrum and are ideal for small companies and startups.  Eventually, these users reach a point where the brokered solution can no longer serve their needs. If your business involves complex integrations hybrid EDI scenarios, EDI brokers may fit your business. If your business is already involved with a brokered type of EDI solution and you are not getting the needed services, you may have outgrown your present solution.

2. Fully Managed Service Provider

Fully Managed service providers offer end-to-end EDI software and/or services just beyond the scope of an EDI broker. They may offer software or cloud-based services and help you translate EDI messages in multiple formats and transform and transfer your data. Their services may be an overreach for some as they are also involved in partner mapping, ERP integration, error handling, and resolutions. 

If you are looking to outsource your entire EDI function and invest your resources in other tasks, this might be a suitable choice for you. If you want to invest in EDI, EDI talent, and do some things yourself, while these service providers may help you achieve your goals, they can also inhibit your growth. While fully managed services work well for many SMEs (Small to medium enterprises), some of the drawbacks of a fully managed service include limited control and visibility. This can lead to unexpected costs and challenges to upgrading to a new ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, or TMS.

3. VAN Providers

VAN providers have been around since the inception of EDI. VANs provide secure, outsourced networks that connect organizations with their trading partners across the globe. A value-added network (VAN) can help you securely send and share data with your partners and provide an outsourced network enabling seamless connections between global trading partners. Large enterprises can leverage this type of network to securely transmit documents from their EDI mailbox to a particular trading partner’s EDI mailbox through a service like a post office, but electronically. By enabling a secure network, they simplify communication between cloud-based EDI providers or internal networks using pre-connected connections with trading partners.  

Some EDI VAN providers also offer supplemental services like data backup and recovery, document mapping, compliance, and performance tracking, and have grown largely through acquisition. If your partners are spread across the globe, and you lack needed network capabilities, a VAN service may be helpful to your business. However, VANs were initially developed for large companies and may be costly if your data exchange volume is high or may cause difficulties if your partner’s messaging format varies from yours. While VANs have long claimed to have a competitive advantage by way of their networks, the supply chain today is full of complexities, something that cannot possibly be resolved by way of a single network.

4. EDI AS2 Providers

Breaking away from the traditional VAN providers are the AS2 Providers.  EDI AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) providers allow for the secure transmission of various types of data, such as EDI and XML, over the internet using HTTP and TCP/IP. AS2 can also be used to transmit images and complete PDF documents, something a traditional VAN is unprepared to do. Among these variations today associated with conventional EDI, these AS2 services are widely used to ensure seamless integration with trading partners, allowing you to handle any file format.  

AS2 providers are typically an addition to a VAN, managed service provider, or brokered EDI relationship. AS2 services require message disposition/delivery notifications that acknowledge the reception after the electronic message (document or data) transmits to the sender via AS2 protocol. One of the stated benefits of using AS2 over FTP is the message delivery notification or MDN.  Although some may argue that the MDN replaces the Functional Acknowledgement (997), the message delivery notification (MDN) used in AS2 only indicates a message received. In contrast, the Functional Acknowledgement (997) also confirms the delivery of a document, any formatting errors, or data loss.

Enterprises can leverage MDNs using in-house IT resources or through a cloud-based vendor to determine if a partner is struggling to keep up with transaction volumes and adjust accordingly. If you are looking for an EDI solution that ensures an end-to-end process and helps you securely send unlimited data while being kind to your partners and easy on your pockets, AS2 has proven to be a worthwhile investment.

5. Complete EDI Solution/Providers

A complete EDI solution/provider is the type of EDI solution provider that develops, implements and maintains EDI software for your business and businesses like yours. This is the type of EDI solution capable of bringing to bear many or all of the solutions described above by catering to your core business and enabling seamless connectivity visibility, onboarding, and training. A type of EDI solution that provides an EDI platform, EDI solutions, connectivity and interoperability by delivering, for example, a VAN and an AS2 solution from within the core of the product or platform.  

Enterprises employing such EDI tools can use their own EDI experts to manage day-to-day activities efficiently. Even activities such as error tracking, handling, and alerting can also be automated with a complete EDI solution.  This EDI solution considers integration with one or more platforms or systems, once relegated to custom code as ‘out of the box’, in other words, included with the platform. This EDI solution provider also tends to keep their solutions up to date and improve upon them by regularly updating these platforms, their customers’ instances and keeping their users informed.  

Complete EDI Solutions/Providers also include and deliver training to ensure that your EDI experts stay current with the latest technologies and can use them to deliver critical or time-sensitive transactions across your partners and networks efficiently and without errors. If you are looking for or are expecting to have or maintain complete control and visibility over your entire set of B2B, B2C messaging and/or your API/EDI practice, then a Complete EDI Solution/Provider might be a good fit for you.

PartnerLinQ by Visionet: Enterprise Connectivity at the Speed of Business

PartnerLinQ is an innovative, cloud-native platform that delivers supply chain visibility and resilience by simplifying trading partner connectivity and interoperability. PartnerLinQ’s native app ecosystem adds business context to the traditional integration, minimizing disruption by increasing set-up velocity and improving implementation speed resulting in overall efficiency gains between 30 and 500%.  

PartnerLinQ comes completely preconfigured and installed with capabilities for intelligent hyper-automation, multi-channel integration, and real-time analytics while allowing your team to take control if that’s what they want to do.  It seamlessly connects multi-tier supply chain networks, channels, and marketplaces with your core ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, or TMS, delivering unified connectivity to a global client base. PartnerLinQ connects with more than 77 Commerce Platforms, Market Places, B2B Portals, Social Channels, enterprise-level systems and shipping solutions today, so you are ready for today and the future.

– Integration at the Speed of Business

PartnerLinQ simplifies the partner onboarding process through its Common Processing Workflow. Complemented by the Business Rule Manager, an entire migration process involving more than 1,000 partners and customers can be completed in weeks rather than months or years. 

– Scale in Transaction Volume

The PartnerLinQ platform scales automatically from transactions number in the hundreds to more than 60 million transactions. It is available in PartnerLinQ’s Azure-based hybrid cloud architecture and in the Google Cloud Platform, managing more than 8,000,000 transactions per day – nearly twice any required capacity.

– Simplified IT Infrastructure

It integrates seamlessly with your core ERP, MRP, CRM, WMS, CMS, TMS, or legacy systems, as well as Commerce Platforms, Market Places, B2B Portals, Social Channels, enterprise-level systems and shipping solutions to ensure that you are better positioned to drive even greater efficiencies with cooperative technologies, that provide real-time updates and actionable insights.

– Enhanced Visibility to Address Pain Points

Real-time insights are critical for today’s supply chain executives, and PartnerLinQ delivers consistent customer value at every touchpoint. PartnerLinQ’s biggest success comes with its ability to turn falling service ratings into top scores with the biggest clients by providing greater visibility into the operations and the ability to consistently deliver on service-level commitments.

For more information, visit our website.

On a warm morning in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at a symposium in 2005 the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made the following statement…

“While the techniques and instruments to absorb fluctuations have improved, there is uncertainty about how they will perform in a serious downturn.”

The speaker was Ragham Rajan and while he was widely ridiculed at the time, his speech would prove to be prophetic. The 2007-08 financial crisis to follow occurred because market changes and advancements were concentrating risk despite appearing to diversify risk.

The Great Disruption

The world is witnessing an unprecedented level of disruption beginning with COVID-19, followed by supply chain issues, and a growing disruption within the labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the flight of workers from the hospitality industry in September, with a reported 863,000 leaving their positions, fully 6.6% of the hospitality workforce. Across the world we see acute shortages for commodities, including computer chips, furniture, and mobile devices among them. Fortunately, there are no nationwide shortages of food. Although in some cases we might have certain foods with low inventory, food production and manufacturing are widely dispersed in North America. Global Industrialization is suffering, and many manufacturers in the US are reporting a wait of more than 90 days to procure materials and assemble parts to make their products.

The Disruption Today

Beyond the supply chain shortages and bottlenecks there are multiple causes for disruption. The emerging cause can be attributed to a shortage of labor, especially truck drivers, which has stalled production operations across plants, distribution points, and delivery centers. Despite rising unemployment, the gap between labor and unfilled positions is increasing.

With global production chains divided into specialized links over many decades, different industries have become inextricably connected over a period of time. Supply shocks have spread across unlikely industries, such as automobiles and semiconductors, or food and fertilizer.

Perhaps an even more visible cause for disruption lies in oversea shipping. The port crisis in the US has received global attention over the last year due to the immense buildup of ships and the never-ending influx of cargo. What supply chain professionals initially viewed as temporary is now threatening to change global shipping infrastructures from the size of ships to business practices, which relied on speed rather than on efficiency, availability, or visibility. Container ships are now circling ports and remaining at sea for longer periods increasing costs. Sea containers cost more to ship, resulting in exorbitant prices, and the accumulation of goods at shipyards, rail yards and warehouses, a direct result of the aforementioned labor shortage, dominated by a shortage of truck drivers.

Supply Chain News

Attending a supply chain conference last week for the first time in more than 18 months, I had an opportunity to listen to several speakers. One by one each delivered his or her view of what happens next, after the great disruption.

One speaker stated simply, “Supply chain is sexy again” and that caught my attention, for starters, I would agree. Having been largely automated and then ignored, the supply chain is again making news and having work in the supply chain for many years, there is more than a passing interest from John Q. Public on Supply chain matters. The speaker went on to talk about a financial newspaper with wide distribution. The paper, the speaker continued, published a mere handful of supply chain articles each month while in recent months, that handful had exploded to several articles every day. The articles, looking more critically now, are well beyond a single new outlet and appear to have a wide array of supply chain perspectives. Reflections of the articles range in impact from the DOW to the NASDAQ and from Retail to CPG and from staples to emerging technologies and in the virtual world these articles are boundless, including this one, which brings us to the following observation.

Stress Testing the Supply Chain

The string of supply chain disruption following the pandemic has resulted in the biggest stress test for supply chain leaders the world over, retail executives in North America anticipate issues to last beyond 2022. What appeared at first to be temporary has now turned into a series of long-lasting setbacks, some perhaps resulting in a permanent state of disruption in some industries. Considering the nearly two years since the onset, when and how these disruptions will end remain a matter of conjecture. The answers are not to be found, not in anyone’s tea leaves, not yet.

The Future of Supply Chain

In order to future-proof, supply chain leaders are facing factors of change that have not been previously considered or discussed, solutions from worker migration to flexible labor practices and the movement of sourcing to new sourcing centers in emerging markets or those which can be more closely controlled or deliver an environmentally neutral position. The solution is in resolving multiple issues in the supply chain as it did way back when plastic hangers seemingly changed to black overnight.

The Solution Approach

Renewing the approach to transparency and visibility across the supply chain is critical in light of the uncertain future in this period of the Great Disruption, now clearly extended, with no end in sight. Increased transparency can better prepare stakeholders to deal with changing regulatory, environmental or compliance requirements while solving supply chain dilemmas. Visibility, through better partner communication, is becoming increasingly important to supply chain leaders that I spoke with at the conference. The importance of end-to-end communication with suppliers and partners across the trading network from their perspective cannot be overstated. Through the right technology, organizations can ensure that the appropriate information is collected, stored, and disseminated, and when partners are onboarded quickly to meet these unexpected scenarios, the results are a positive impact on business and on other concerns.

Supply Chain Advantage

The PartnerLinQ advantage is its hybrid cloud architecture and easy partner onboarding, PartnerLinQ delivers a smarter B2B/B2C Integration platform with automated End-to-End Workflows and includes business rules for omnichannel integration.

PartnerLinQ’s unique approach to supply chain can help your organization communicate with your partners rapidly, ensuring end-to-end digital connectivity across all functional areas and through a centralized visibility platform.

PartnerLinQ zeroes in on issues, tracks them, and provides detailed analysis of all of your partners, including all of their inbound and outbound transactions and can generate alerts for specific partner events, delivering the insight your users need to address supply chain issues immediately.

Scan2EDI converts your manual process into electronic transactions using robotic process automation, optical character recognition, document management software, business process outsourcing, and artificial intelligence. Scan2EDI offers application integration advantages including PartnerLinQ’s ERP Integration Framework.

Instant Ocean Visibility provides container status at your fingertips. Integrated, automated, and reliable, your port – your container, Instant Ocean Visibility removes human intervention from container tracking, eliminates endless web searches, eliminates phone calls & email and eliminates voice messages and call backs.

Take control of your supply chain in the present and forge a new one for the future with PartnerLinQ. Talk with our experts to learn more.

By Kevin Balentine, PartnerLinQ

Building a New Resilient Supply Chain

The global marketplace today can perhaps be described as volatile. Prices are on the rise, shortages are popping up unexpectedly and in unexpected places.  Many major retail grocers are expecting center store sales to increases, an indication of things to come.

While supply chains have become more extensive and interconnected, they have also shown unprecedented instability in the face of disruption. In the wake of COVID-19, the fragile stability of lean supply chains found difficulty in recovering quickly in the face of disruption.  What has emerged is a succession of supply side ripples across multiple industries. The ripples collide until at last they reach the end of the line and, similar to the domino effect, as one chain ends another begins in sequence.  Many of the assumptions upon which the lean manufacturing model was created, were undone by market and environment variables that emerged during the onset of the COVID disruption.

Organizations are beginning to accept a pretense of recovery amid a truly formidable challenge of accelerated customer demand and labor shortages, and while research indicates that retail sales can grow by as much as 10.5% to 13.5% to generate more than USD 4.4 trillion in this year, there are concerns. Having undergone unprecedented and unwelcome change throughout the past year, suppliers require stability and flexibility to tackle the surging demand. Resisting instability forms the key priority for retail suppliers, which brings focus to resilience.

21% That’s the number of respondents in a recent Gartner survey who affirmed that they have a resilient network at present. Giving context to the figure, resilience implies elevated visibility, persistent velocity in moving product from source to destination while avoiding supply chain constraints. In this current moment of volatility in the market, it is imperative for retail suppliers and retail enterprises to increase their supply chain resilience.

Becoming more resilient is no longer a luxury for supply chain leaders. The long-standing tradition of lean manufacturing and its entrenched philosophy will be the challenge to overcome. Supply chains need to be efficient as well as resilient, and practices such as redundant supply chain operations, alternative factories, and ample safety stock need to be developed in parallel with productivity and performance improvements.  Supply chains also need to maintain compliance substituting lesser performing partners for those more suited following the COVID disruption. The widespread disruptions affected supply chain monitoring and audit and while enforcement may have been relaxed, performance improvements can only be brought about by effective monitoring and accounting. In order to holistically build a resilient supply chain network, retail suppliers need specific data elements to be incorporated into their supply chain and a robust solution methodology which combines five important elements is key.

Connectivity

A surefire approach to building supply chain resilience in retail is ensuring anytime, anyone, anywhere communication, systems need to be ‘access anywhere’ supportive of SSO (Single Sign on) and active directory. Manual partner-to-partner communication requires a lot of paperwork and must be reduced in light of staffing shortages.  Manual communication methodologies lead to errors and errors mean more human intervention. Automatic and secure document flows compatible with multiple enterprise level system and capable of a variety of data interchange formats and in real time delivers resilience.

Flexibility

A significant aspect of resilience is ironing out friction within the network. A resilient supply chain must be flexible and able to fix critical issues with the least amount of effort.  ‘Fix-on-the-fly’ functionality reducing human interaction increases flexibility. An efficient business rule manager is key to incorporate such flexibility. Reusable business rules ensure seamless partner onboarding and transaction integration.  Reusable sets of business rules allow for the conservation of scarce technical resources and ease of use.  The addition of reusable rules to rule sets to overcome existing issues, and proactive alerting based on business rules means time to make a correction where and when necessary. Change, through a business rules engine can be automated and in real time. Audit functions mean changes can be rolled out, and rolled back if that become necessary.

Adaptability

Perhaps the greatest lesson that the past year has taught suppliers in retail has been the importance of adaptation. The transition to digital and the prominence of ecommerce platforms has been well documented in the retail industry. An omnichannel strategy covers all potential channels for distribution and sales. An omnichannel strategy makes sense amid market disruptions such as we’ve seen this past year and a half.  An omnichannel strategy means demand can be met with convenience and speed. While a stand-alone omnichannel strategy as a solution is one way to meet demand, leveraging a common process workflow to bring transactions in or out of the enterprise the same way every time means an increased ability to create multiple trading relationships and do so quickly. By eliminating the need for additional support or maintenance, a common process workflow takes partner on boarding to a new level while increasing the utility of business rules reduces the dependencies on map and mapping activities. Combining centralized B2B communication with such a workflow results in a highly independent system in which transactions and business processes are handled automatically, accounting for connection changes, partner onboarding, acquisitions, mergers and complete enterprise migration without adding disruption.

Accountability

With much of the COVID disruption behind, and planning and change ahead, compliance has never been more important for retail suppliers.  A flexible and effective event notification processor to stay on top of supply chain events and issues in real time becomes a valuable tool. Such rules-based processing must be backed by comprehensive audits, reports, and analytics.  Such tools must be visible across the internal supply chain operation. Transaction transportation, transformation and integration tools must include analytics to ensure consistent business operations, keeping disparate teams in touch with the latest goings-on in the supply chain domain.

The Way Forward

Accepting resilience is just the first step. The path includes overcoming challenges like supply chain and labor shortages and success in resilience is achieved by combining five key elements:

• Centralized communication across multiple methods, formats, and platforms
• Flexible business rules, business rules management, and alerting.
• An adaptive common processing workflow that simplifies onboarding and processing
• Visibility, accountability, and adaptability
• Easy access to these key elements and in one place.

A resilient path will quickly deliver an elevated level of performance, particularly important as the retail industry begins to leave the COVID disruption behind and starts to engage with the new normal.

You are probably familiar with this ‘BIG VAN’ claim repeated early and often by the champions of value-added networks (VANs):

‘The advantage of the network is the network itself.’

The claim, like all wide-ranging quotes, is to some extent only relatively true. Its validity depends upon who you are connecting with and how actively you link up with your trading partners. A closer look at the flow of goods and information within your business network will possibly reveal that no single network or VAN can address all your B2B/B2C communication needs.

While EDI and, in some instances, the VAN does help you connect, connecting with all your trading partners translates into a significantly higher ROI.  EDI today means more than simply X12; it means supporting multiple standards, formats, and transactions from X12, UN/EDIFACT, and GS1 XML trade messages to a number of non-EDI formats like JSON, flat files, text files, and proprietary XML message formats.

Read more: The truth behind the “competitive advantage” of value-added networks

EDI also means accessing a diverse set of communication methodologies – like AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP, and APIs – each with their own set of variables. While transaction formats and transportation methodologies make EDI more versatile, the complexity of handling such varied data formats and communication methodologies creates its own set of challenges, particularly when you consider the ‘BIG VAN’ value proposition.

The ‘BIG VAN’ value prop proudly claims that all members in your value chain are available on the same network or VAN as yours; while true to some extent, this is not an entirely accurate assessment. A VAN connection is by all accounts handy and, in some cases, necessary to interact with some trading partners. But it certainly is not everything.

The right tool with the right EDI transportation methods delivers far more effectively than ‘BIG VAN’ and at a lesser cost.

The Significance of the EDI VAN Interconnect

The ‘BIG VAN’ claim is largely backed by the EDI VAN interconnect. The interconnect is a tool that helps your value added network communicate with other value added networks and facilitates exchange of EDI transaction documents between connected pairs of trade partners. The more partners you connect with, the bigger the benefit derived from your communication network.

VAN interconnects effectively reduce friction between and among VANs, while also reducing the need for new VANs. The largest of the VANs reduce VAN-related confusion within partner networks by making claims to connect to thousands of trading partners; in effect though, ‘BIG VAN’ highlights the characteristics of EDI under which all EDI solutions and VAN partners operate. 

But what about transactions beyond X12 EDI? 

‘BIG VAN’ and the interconnect rely on a steady stream of ISA and GS identifiers within X12 transactions to move data, without which the ‘BIG VAN’ is about as useful as a cell phone without buttons.  While the VAN connection does handle X12, what about images, APIs, or XML files? These are typically not included in ‘BIG VAN’ offerings and, in most cases, require a different product altogether, adding to your overall cost.

A closer look at the VAN interconnect reveals that the reality of ‘BIG VAN’ is very different from the claim; if the interconnect connects ALL VANs then ALL VANs have the same access to trading partners, which means that ‘BIG VAN’ has a very different concern. ‘BIG VAN’ is concerned that it will inevitably be relegated to the stature of an ‘Ordinary VAN’ and without reservation. 

‘BIG VAN’ makes a big claim and living up to that claim is becoming nearly impossible.  This makes all ‘small VAN’ operators a competitive threat – why else would ‘BIG VAN’ make such claims if not to control and confuse the market? The VAN interconnect and image files remove the confusion from the claim ‘the advantage of the network is the network itself’; what else is there to the reality of ‘BIG VAN’?

The Synergy

Architecturally speaking, an EDI solution is actually made up of three components (or solution layers, if you’ll pardon the expression) – the transportation, transformation, and integration layers. While EDI is very effective when it leverages a ‘VAN’ connection, the VAN component is only a fraction of EDI, less than 30%.

Think about your VAN connection in the same way you think about how your mobile phone functions.  Your mobile phone functions by combining the services provided by the phone manufacturer, an infrastructure provider, and a telecom company; similarly, EDI functions by leveraging the synergy of these component layers to work as a synchronous whole.

Components of the ‘VAN Solution’

• Transportation. Along with VANs, this layer works using many other methodologies such as AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP, and APIs. Most of these methodologies have been around for a couple of decades now. Your VAN, in fact, may still be using FTP to connect you with your VAN mailbox; if it is not leveraging FTP, it is likely using AS2. Get in touch with your EDI team representative and ask, they should be able to tell you.
• Transformation. The transformation layer facilitates translation between different (EDI) formats. Formats like X12, UN/EDIFACT, GS1 XML trade messages, JSON, flat files, text files, or proprietary XML messages are transformed into formats that your ERP systems can easily understand and use.
• Integration. In the final layer, the transformed message is available to be consumed by the ERP. API connectors have been introduced in recent years to connect you with your ERP in a normalized way, much like the ODBC connector you may have used in the past.  The integration layer can be an API or a connector like ODBC or ODATA – the main emphasis here lies in providing (a) the route for landing the messages and (b) feedback that lets you know whether the order was rejected or accepted. The latter is the target, which requires the least manual input.

Do More Connections Provide More Benefits?

The key word is ‘choice’. If one network has the potential to provide a competitive advantage, do multiple networks offer even greater benefit?

The quantity of available networks is only one criteria that determines how effective your network is.  Connecting to multiple VANs is, frankly, a drain on resources, particularly when all VANs make use of the same VAN interconnect. 

While there is a need to be mindful of the connections available to your trading partners, using multiple VAN connections to stay in touch makes no sense at all. It is like having two or more cell phones or cable TV subscriptions, particularly when methodologies like AS2, MFTP, FTP, SFTP, and APIs are available.  Many of these options have low or no cost associated with them while VAN costs are subscription based and incur transaction fees that need to be paid monthly, much like that second cell phone that we referenced earlier.

The AS2 Effect

Application Statement 2 (AS2) is used for a reliable and secure transfer of data over the Internet. It provides a direct, unhindered connection with a trading partner and delivers document receipts and real-time tracking without requiring a VAN or a VAN interconnect. Your standard internet connection serves as the transportation layer; it is payload-agnostic, which means you can use the same tool to transmit images and every business has internet connectivity today. 

Unlike a VAN, AS2 does not typically have monthly charges or transaction fees. It reduces the chances of transaction failure by establishing a one-to-one transmission channel, without the need for a middle man, a VAN interconnect, or a ubiquitous VAN. Also, there is a Message Delivery Notification, but more on the MDN at a later time.

Putting It All Together

Now that we have unpacked the ‘BIG VAN’ claim, we can conclude that your EDI solution should provide more than one communication channel, has to be capable of handling a wide range of EDI formats, and MUST integrate smoothly and automatically with your enterprise systems.

We’ve also come to the conclusion that ‘BIG VAN’ cannot support the features that you need without complicating matters with additional software and subscriptions.

That’s why PartnerLinQ is different. PartnerLinQ is not a VAN; rather, it is a highly scalable, dependable, and configurable EDI and B2B communication solution. PartnerLinQ is ‘integration without complication’ that supports integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and other ERP systems. It includes an AS2 solution, FTP, MFT, and SFTP and can connect with any VAN, making it the perfect tool for B2B/B2C communication for your EDI and non-EDI partners.

PartnerLinQ also supports API-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento out of the box, providing your organization a seamless shift between EDI and API integrations; there’s nothing to add and nothing to buy, it’s all in there.

The solution also operates seamlessly between EDI and non-EDI formats – from X12, UN/EDIFACT, and GS1 XML to non-EDI formats like XML and JSON. While there are too many formats to list in a blog, this is a crucial factor that make PartnerLinQ a perfect choice for your EDI, B2B, and API integration and for smooth communication, while decreasing your reliance on ‘BIG VAN.’