Electronic Data Interchange
Managing the Data Flood
Orders, delivery notes, invoices – MAKRO and our suppliers exchange huge amounts of data every day. About 20 years ago this was expensive and time-consuming: piles of paper were typical. Coordination processes were laborious and complicated and we were facing the challenge of dealing with this flood of data without losing control. Then MAKRO mandated EDI for communications with its suppliers in 1999 and today Electronic Data Interchange Processing Systems take care of the exchange of information quickly and efficiently, optimising both its business processes and communications with suppliers and is reducing its costs significantly.
How does EDI work?
EDI requires all parties involved to put their messages in the same language, in MAKRO either TRADACOMS or EANCOM.
Which business processes can be reflected electronically?
GTIN - products bear the GTIN as bar code and can be read by scanners.
ORDERS - to order the required quantities timed to demand.
DESADV - despatch advice, Suppliers picks the orders and informs MAKRO about the time and content of the delivery using the EANCOM message type DESADV.
Invoice - After successful delivery suppliers forward invoices to the MAKRO using one of the invoice message standards.
Which advantages does EDI offer?
Electronic Data Interchange accelerates the volume of data exchange between MAKRO and its suppliers and improves data quality; it enables “out of hours” business processes to be carried out through business process automation and thereby reduces costs.
