Are you ready to automate your orders with Amazon? If yes, it’s time to move to Amazon EDI.
If you sell large quantities of products in bulk to Amazon, investing in an EDI solution will save you time and money. You can set up Amazon EDI to integrate with Amazon Vendor Central and your own inventory management system.
Automating purchase orders, invoices, stock availability, and more are all possible through Amazon EDI. Taking the time to learn more about EDI as you consider an integration strategy will provide your business with the tools it needs to get up and running as quickly as possible.
Read on to get 6 tips to help you make a successful transition to Amazon EDI.
1. Things to Consider
When making the decision to move into Amazon EDI, there are 3 main things you need to consider.
Why Are You Integrating EDI?
Set goals and intended-value objectives for integrating Amazon EDI. Making this move could save you time and reduce errors. It will certainly reduce your Amazon chargebacks.
Stock Management
When you integrate Amazon EDI, you need to ensure that your inventory management platform will work seamlessly with it. The automation that comes from EDI will save time and money and make your inventory management more effective.
Specifics of Your Vendor Central Relationship
Talk to your fulfilment team or the third-party you use. You’ll want to discuss with them the specifics of your fulfilment arrangement with Amazon.
You may be selling directly through Amazon or they may buy from you to sell. Alternatively, you may do both.
Are you selling globally, just in Europe, or in a few specific territories? This will have an impact on how you set up your EDI account with Amazon.
2. Choose the Best Way to Use Amazon EDI for Your Company
Once you have assessed your company’s EDI needs and other related aspects listed above, you’ll need to work out the best way to use EDI.
If you don’t use an EDI connection you’re staff are likely spending 20+ hours a week on manually routing orders through Vendor Central (VC). Integrating EDI will end that drain on human resources.
If you only need to connect through EDI for one transaction type you can set up the integration in that manner. A typical example of such an integration would be for purchase orders or invoices. These transactions are generated in-house and then sent via EDI to Amazon.
If you already use an ERP system that can handle large order and inventory management volume you can route EDI transactions through the ERP system. This allows you to process the transactions through your in-house system rather than Vendor Central.
Finally, if you have multiple sales channels you might find it most effective to connect Amazon EDI into your fulfilment system directly.
3. Types of Transactions
Amazon EDI offers a set of possible transactions that your business can perform through EDI. They are not all required. Here is the list of possible transactions.
- 810 Invoice
- 820 Payment Order/Remittance Advice
- 830 Planning Schedule with Release Capability
- 846 Inventory Inquiry/Advice
- 850 Purchase Order
- 852 Product Activity Data
- 855 Purchase Order Acknowledgement
- 856 Ship Notice/Manifest
- 860 Purchase Order Change Request – Buyer Initiated
- 865 Purchase Order Change Acknowledgement/Request – Seller Initiated
When integrating Amazon EDI into your workflow, you’ll need to assess which of these transactions or reports you need. You’ll also want to consider which of them are best pushed through Vendor Central directly and which make more sense to keep in your internal systems.
4. Self-Setup
If your company has someone with the necessary skills you can set up your Amazon EDI directly. In your Vendor Central account look for “Self Service Setup” under the EDI menu.
Once you’re in the right part of VC, enable global settings. This process will get your system talking to Amazon’s server. You’ll authenticate your server so that secure messages can pass between you and VC.
Next, you’ll need to set up each EDI message from the list above that you have decided to automate with Amazon.
5. Spend Time on Amazon EDI to Get it Right
Using Amazon EDI through your Amazon Vendor Central account is a time-consuming process. Someone within your finance team, supply chain team, or purchasing team will need to spend time learning EDI. They will also need to spend time manipulating the “automated” process in order to get the most out of it.
Once you have integrated EDI into your workflow and you are managing the process you will start to see a number of significant benefits.
These include:
- Delivering products to consumers quickly and efficiently
- Reduction in Amazon chargebacks and other inventory-related penalties
- Reduction in human errors from manually inputting orders into Amazon
- Increased discoverability for your products on Amazon customer-facing platforms
- Better compliance with Amazon terms of agreements
6. Use an Integrated EDI Solution
If you don’t have the staff bandwidth or expertise to integrate and manage Amazon EDI you should consider using a third-party EDI solution. We offer a variety of such solutions.
Our expertise in web EDI, integrated EDI, reporting, and automation can reduce the impact on your workflow when you integrate Amazon EDI.
Amazon EDI Integration is Critical
As you can see from our 6 tips for successful Amazon EDI integration, there are many things you need to be aware of. Make sure you understand your own goals and needs before you dive in. Choose an EDI integration level that makes realizing those goals as easy as possible.
Spend time learning the system. Make sure you will get the reporting you need. Ensure that your orders and inventory management are seamlessly integrated.
Putting all this together will mean that your Amazon EDI will function as it is supposed to. Integrating it will save you time and money.
To learn more about Amazon EDI integration solutions contact us today. We have a wide suite of options that will suit your business needs when it comes to EDI.
