First, get off the ledge- it’s not that bad. Very rarely will an EDI mandate arrive without some alternatives for suppliers. You may have to hold your nose as you select one of them, but at least you’ll be in compliance. Here are some things I’d recommend doing as soon as you receive your letter.

• Read it thoroughly. It should tell you which electronic transactions are required, the timeframe for compliance, alternatives, penalties for non-compliance, and a few other details.
• If you’ve signed a contract with the customer, take a look at it to make sure the mandate letter is consistent with what you’ve signed.
• Locate someone who can help you understand the costs and benefits of the alternative approaches described in the letter.
• Gather the right people together in your organization to provide input.
• Make a decision on which alternative is best for you.

Generally, the options will be to do ‘traditional EDI’, which would involve the purchase of hardware and software as well as the development of EDI expertise, or to use a 3rd party (someone like SPS) that offers a browser-based ‘webform’ process. Other options may or may not be presented, but those are the two most common. Chances are that if you don’t use EDI now, you’ll select the webform approach. Let’s go ahead and assume that’s the case. Should you be worried about all the changes you’ll have to make and the added costs you’ll incur? Here are some things to keep in mind.

• Your 3rd party provider, let’s assume it’s SPS, has taken clients through the process literally hundreds of times. They know what they’re doing.
• You should be familiar with the transactions. They should be the basic ones you trade manually with your customers now. If not, you’ll need to work with your customer and SPS to identify what you need to do to support it.
• It may improve your processes. Typically, the webforms will have business rules built in to ensure the information matches up and flows appropriately. Other processes in addition to the order and invoice cycle (for example label creation) may also be included.
• Take advantage of any training offered by your provider. Even if it looks easy, it’ll give you the opportunity to ask questions.
• There’ll be a cost involved, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. If you didn’t bake it into your current contract, make it up on the next one. Talk to your business contact if you feel the cost makes your business relationship unprofitable.

A highly underrated contributor to success for this type of project is your attitude. That’s entirely under your control. Hopefully, you realize that nobody’s trying to shake you down, steal your money, do unscrupulous things to you, or put you out of business. Your customer’s mandate was driven by their need to control costs on their end, which can translate into selling more of your products. It’s a win-win for both of you, so be sure to keep those positive thoughts in mind about how your success with this relatively minor change in your process will result in more profits for your business moving forward.

Lastly, after you’ve used webforms for awhile, you might want to consider how you could automate more on your end to improve efficiency. SPS and other third party providers offer services to help you integrate the data from your customer into your system, or you could investigate new EDI offerings now available through ‘the cloud’. Integration may not be something you’re prepared to do right out of the gate, but the advantages of integrated EDI, particularly in processing speed and error reduction, are things to think about as you grow.