For suppliers and manufacturers trading with big retailers, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), is how the conversation starts. It’s how Home Depot sends a purchase order, how Rona expects your team to send an ASN, and how Walmart requires your invoices to be formatted. EDI is the only way to work with and sell to large retailers.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are where those documents end up internally. Whether it’s NetSuite or Sage 300, your ERP is the back-end system that houses all your inventory and gets manually updated with order data.
When EDI and ERP work in these silos, the result is a series of manual processes that are error-prone, resulting in shipping delays and bloating your costs. With EDI interface integrations, businesses can unify trade between partners and systems, because EDI and ERP connections are no longer a “nice to have”, it's a strategic requirement for any supplier looking to scale.
At its core, EDI ERP integration connects trading partners (via EDI) with the systems your team uses to manage operations (your ERP).
That means a purchase order (850) from Home Depot doesn’t just show up in an inbox or an EDI portal. Instead, it’s automatically injected into your ERP without any manual keying of data. The result is a structured workflow of information from partner to platform.
With integration, there’s no more jumping between systems, rekeying data, or chasing down compliance errors. It’s about giving your team the tools to move faster with fewer mistakes.
Imagine you're a supplier using NetSuite as your ERP and selling into Home Depot. Home Depot sends your team a high volume of orders every week, and they expect an EDI-compliant 855 (purchase order acknowledgment) within hours, followed by an ASN (856) before the shipment arrives.
Without integration, your team downloads orders from a portal, enters the details into NetSuite, prepares a shipment, and then generates a separate file to upload back to Home Depot.
Let’s break down the full order-to-cash lifecycle for a supplier receiving a purchase order from a retailer like Home Depot:
|
Stage |
Without Integration |
With EDI ERP Integration |
|
PO Received (850) |
Manually downloaded from the portal |
Auto-imported into ERP |
|
PO Acknowledgment (855) |
Manually created and uploaded |
Auto-generated upon ERP entry |
|
Inventory Allocation |
Requires ERP lookup and entry |
Auto-triggers allocation rules |
|
Advanced Shipping Notice (856) |
Built manually in the EDI tool |
Pulled from ERP and auto-sent |
|
Invoicing (810) |
Delayed until fulfillment is confirmed |
Automatically issued on ship/fulfill |
|
Exception Handling |
Requires manual tracking |
Logged and alerted in real time |
|
Order Visibility |
Disconnected across systems |
Unified dashboard view |
With full integration, what once took 45–60 minutes per order can take under 5 minutes, with dramatically fewer errors.
Most growing suppliers hit a wall at some point, and ultimately, the rising cost of operations doesn’t scale.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Let’s be honest: “integration” is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. But what actually changes when you stop manually bridging the gap between EDI and ERP?
Manual order entry slows everything down, especially when larger retailers send in hundreds, if not thousands, of orders a week. Without integration, each one has to be downloaded and keyed into your ERP manually. With integration, the PO is sent directly into your ERP without any manual intervention.
Suppliers using EDI ERP integration typically see 30–70% faster order processing times.
When your team has to wait for a shipment to be fulfilled before they can issue an invoice, cash gets tied up. That delay becomes a huge financial burden at scale.
An integrated setup triggers 810 invoices automatically for faster payment cycles.
Suppliers see a 20% improvement in Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) after automating invoice flows.
Every time someone rekeys data, there’s a risk, whether it's the wrong SKU or wrong quantity. Multiply that across thousands of orders, and suddenly your error rate becomes your reputation.
Integration means the data is mapped once and flows without human intervention. It’s not just about speed, it’s about getting it right the first time.
One mid-market supplier reported going from 68% to 99.9% fulfillment accuracy after integrating EDI with NetSuite.
Retailers don’t mess around when it comes to compliance. Late 855s? Missing ASNs? Bad data formats? You get hit with a chargeback, and it adds up.
An integrated system ensures that all documents are sent in the right format, every time.
Many suppliers see 40–70% fewer chargebacks once they automate their document workflows.
Before integration, your ops and IT teams spent hours babysitting orders, troubleshooting EDI rejections, and putting out fires. After integration, those exceptions are flagged early, and most resolve themselves.
You don’t have to add headcount just to keep up with volume. You get to scale without breaking your team.
One supplier estimated they gained back 15+ hours per week across ops and support by eliminating manual EDI handling.
It’s not about whether you can keep managing EDI manually. You probably can. But integration changes the math, and turns order management from a bottleneck into a growth engine.
If your business has decided that it’s time to cut costs on all the manual data entry, you have a couple of options for how to connect EDI to your ERP. The most common option is an iPaaS (integration platform as a service), like Boomi, MuleSoft, or Celigo. They provide the tools to build custom connections between EDI partners and your ERP and are fairly configurable so long as you have a strong technical team.
That said, for teams without large IT departments or a budget for consultants, these configurations can be slightly out of reach. Even for larger enterprises, this investment can mean compromising other projects.
iPaaS tools are powerful, but they’re not purpose-built for order management. They’re designed to solve problems across industries, providing general solutions for general use cases. But supply chains are some of the most complex use cases.
That’s where Order Management System (OMS) comes in. A good OMS for B2B connects EDI, ERP, portals, and more into one preconfigured workflow. Instead of forcing your teams to stitch together point-to-point integrations, everything is managed and unified in a single flow that syncs cleanly with your ERP.
|
Capability |
iPaaS |
B2B Order Management System |
|
EDI-native support |
Requires third-party EDI module |
✅ Built-in |
|
Trading partner compliance |
Requires custom logic |
✅ Pre-configured |
|
Business user-friendly |
Often technical |
✅ Yes |
|
Centralized order view |
❌ No |
✅ Yes |
|
ERP integration |
✅ |
✅ |
|
Scalability with new channels |
⚠️ Requires more flows |
✅ Plug-and-play |
If you’re a high-growth supplier, an OMS designed for B2B workflows will often deliver on ROI faster and require much less maintenance than iPaaS tools.
Alternatives to OMS and iPaaS are legacy EDI platforms. While they’ve achieved market dominance, they’re also reliant on dated technology and archaic pricing structures.
The issues with legacy systems include:
These legacy systems were impactful when they first launched, but have become obsolete in a new era of how B2B orders operate. Modern EDI ERP connections should be integrated into your entire workflow, not sit adjacent in a silo that your team has to piecemeal together.
If you’re evaluating your options, here’s what a future-proof EDI ERP system should offer:
It should connect to your ERP without requiring custom code.
Not just EDI, but also portals, field sales apps, email-to-order flows, and marketplaces
Order status, error logs, and delivery acknowledgments should be available to operations.
As modern B2B trading and selling evolve, the future of B2B supply chains is dependent on connected systems. EDI isn’t going anywhere (at least yet), but how you manage it needs to change quickly.
In the next few years, expect to see:
The suppliers that succeed will be the ones that eliminate entry-level data management roles, stop duct-taping systems together, and start thinking of implementing a unified architecture.