Ep. 5 - The Hidden Cost of EDI Chaos

Описание: Orders don’t move without clean data. We go deep with Jonathan Kish, SVP at Orderful, to reveal why EDI still runs global retail, where it quietly breaks omnichannel performance, and how modern teams can turn a tangle of maps and testing into a fast, reliable growth engine. From empty shelves to OTIF deductions, the symptoms are familiar; the root causes live in outdated mapping, slow retailer testing cycles, and inventory that never syncs across stores, marketplaces, and drop ship networks.

Jonathan explains how retailers standardize on EDI specs and why that foundation won’t vanish just because APIs are popular. He breaks down the documents that matter: 850s for POs, 856s for ASNs, 204/210 for freight, 810 for invoices, and 997 acknowledgments, and shows where small errors become big penalties. We explore the onboarding bottleneck that delays first purchase orders by months, plus the ripple effects on cash flow, vendor scorecards, and customer promise dates. Real case studies highlight how a single JSON-style integration and automated validations can migrate hundreds to thousands of partners in weeks, not quarters, without rewriting code per retailer.

We also look ahead. As agentic shopping grows and real-time inventory promises are made in chat, search, and social, the margin for data errors shrinks. Jonathan shares how AI-driven validation and captured testing “tribal knowledge” can compress EDI cycles from months to days, and eventually hours, while web-based EDI opens a simple path for smaller suppliers to trade without engineers or per-transaction fees. If you care about omnichannel reliability, faster vendor onboarding, and fewer chargebacks, this conversation is a practical blueprint for turning EDI from a drag into an advantage.

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