Un/Edifact - Edi

Electronic data interchange (EDI) systems provide a standardized method for conducting and tracking electronic transactions and business documents structured according to EDI syntax and design rules. Using EDIFACT, businesses are able to engage in transactions on a global basis, using a standard that renders business documents in a global language. EDIFACT aimed to standardize EDI programs used in commercial activities on a worldwide basis so as to ease the transition to both a global and electronic economy. By using EDIFACT, companies and organizations can transmit electronic data with each other regardless of the software or computer used to generate it.

The original impetus toward the development of electronic data interchange was to cut the costs and time spent on the myriad paper documents involved in transactions, including contracts, bills, manifests, letters of credit, and many others. By coalescing all these into a series of standardized electronic protocols, the time spent of each transaction; the costs of each transmission of data; and the propensity for documents to be lost, misfiled, or miscopied all decline considerably. EDI is in fact at the heart of such staples of the information economy as just-in-time manufacturing, supply chain management, and scores of other practices and processes central to the contemporary commercial environment.