| Electronic Data
Interchange
With the advances in EDI, data entry errors are nearly a thing
of the past. Furthermore, distribution companies who used to rely
on an accounting staff of 25 (doing order entry and payables transactions
all day) can now operate with 5 people managing the electronic interchange
of information. EDI has truly revolutionized the supply chain workflow
which is made apparent by the below case study highlighting the
Edisoft solution with Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP).
Background
In an effort to improve overall customer service, our client sought
to find areas where internal processing could be streamlined and
turnaround performance could be improved for their external customers.
To that end, our goals were to:
- Lower the cost of processing a claim, invoice, and payment
- Improve quality of service in accounting and claims transactions
(in terms of accuracy, speed, and efficiency) to the business
partners
- Improve upon the speed at which the clients receive payments
by increasing efficiencies internally and externally.
While all trading partners use common data definitions and common
names, the actual data is not always identical.
One example was reference numbers. The brokers and reinsurers all
can potentially use different numbers to refer to the same contract.
Synchronizing these numbers required a great deal of time and effort
each time the client worked with a new trading partner, but unless
they were synchronized, transactions could not be matched in the
receiving system.
Solutions/Integrated Functions
Our client was already using Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP) as their standard business management system. It was necessary
to custom design a separate database to house transactional information
to be sent electronically. We needed to integrate the solution with
the Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP), but not build in
rigid dependencies, so each respective part of the system could
evolve as needed.
Aside from setting up the Edisoft Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
translator to exchange the data, it was also necessary to “map”
the transactional information into the Edisoft EDI translator. This
process involved equating the client’s data fields to the
ACORD standard data fields. This was somewhat time-consuming, but
only had to be completed one time. (ACORD defines a uniform electronic
data interchange standard for certificates of insurance)
Then we began the tests with one trading partner at a time, sharing
ideas and assisting them in solving issues similar to our client’s.
Once testing phases were completed with a business partner, the
production phase began, and we moved on to testing with the next
interested trading partner.
Return On Investment
We succeeded in eliminating paper in up to 90% of the cases. Re-keying
of data has been eliminated and data accuracy has increased. Two
other partners are receiving messages in a production mode, although
they have not yet integrated the messages into their internal system.
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