Best EDI solution for Health & Beauty brands

All companies share business documentation with their trading network. Buyers send payment information to suppliers, manufacturers of goods bill the retailers that sell them, and warehousing specialists share despatch advice with delivery firms, and so on. With the extensive exchange of order and invoice documents, retailers are increasingly mandating the use of EDI to allow a frictionless order-to-fulfilment process.

The promise of process improvement

EDI is a digital software solution that enables brands to exchange digital documentation with trading partners in an automated, frictionless way.

It means companies no longer have to raise orders and invoices manually, send documents by post or email, or input related information manually into management systems with the attendant risk of human error creeping in.

The best EDI solution improves so many processes from inventory management to shipping to audit.

EDI has supported global commerce and industry for decades as the bedrock of digital document exchange across retail networks and supply chains.

Compared with paper-based systems, EDI can reduce costs by up to 80% and improve security, regulatory compliance and auditing time according to Billentis.

Why health and beauty brands need EDI

As with other sectors, health and beauty brands are keen to benefit from efficiency improvements. But there is added pressure on health and beauty budgets because of the impact of the pandemic.

Industry revenues contracted by 30% in 2020 in line with reduced opportunities to shop in-store for product lines such as fragrances and make-up, according to a recent McKinsey report.

With buying habits moving from walk-in to online, many brands have streamlined their operational models around direct-to-consumer digital channels and regrouped their supply chain management accordingly.

Process optimisation

Health and beauty e-commerce company, The Hut Group, has optimised its supply chain documentation processes with a scalable, cloud-based EDI solution from Transalis.

As well as digital document exchange, the Transalis EDI solution includes trading partner on-boarding and management, system mapping, testing and monitoring.

As a result, The Hut Group optimised its technical resources and improved its relationships with consumers and around 1,000 suppliers across the UK and Europe, selling upwards of 50,000 SKUs.

Operational benefits

Transatlantic beauty company, SpaceNK, has evolved its use of EDI from a legacy model mandated by a single retail trading partner that was neither efficient nor cost effective.

Since engaging with Transalis, SpaceNK saw an instant £60,000 saving. Read more: How Space NK cut £60,000 a year by switching EDI provider.

SpaceNK’s previous EDI provider dictated the use of a VAN (Value Added Network). Under this outdated approach, the customer is charged by the number of characters in their trading messages, with penalties for going over an annual limit. Read more: Why VAN charges are legacy pricing and not part of EDI.

“A VAN doesn’t really offer any value at all,” says Chris Wakeham, SpaceNK’s Global IT Director. “It’s very hard to set a limit at the outset and the costs spiral the more successful you are. We didn’t want to be penalised for exceeding VAN restrictions because we were doing more business. A VAN is a very granular barometer of charging. It’s antiquated and simply introduces overheads.”

Switching to Transalis cloud-based EDI had immediate benefits, says Chris.

“It instantly removed a significant VAN charge involving the retail partner. Outdated VAN charges were inflating EDI costs by an unsustainable £60,000 a year because of the granular level charges for each character of data sent.

Instead, a VAN was replaced by a straightforward fee for managing the connection that was a tiny fraction of what we had been paying.

We also increased our speed of processing. We were able to process sales documents in seconds whereas before it could have taken three or four days. Many orders were in excess of 1,000 lines which could take a long time to manually input, not only with us, but also with our trading partner, so increased speed saved both vendor and customer time. We immediately saw the operational benefits.”

Customer first approach

At Transalis, we keep our customers at the centre of everything we do, providing solutions that meet their individual business needs and help them overcome the challenges they face.

Why we’re different

• We put you in control of what you get from your EDI solution
• We keep everything transparent with no hidden fees
• We include unlimited message volumes as standard
• We get you up and running with your EDI solution without any disruptions

eDI Essential

Organisations who have been mandated by their trading partner to implement an EDI connection can buy eDI Essential online and be set up in 24 hours!

eDI Connect & eDI Connect+

Those with a larger and more complex trading network and need integration with their existing systems can choose between eDI Connect and eDI Connect+

eDI Freedom

eDI Freedom offers flexibility and gives you complete control over which capabilities you would like to include in your EDI solution. From custom message formats to trading network onboarding support, we’ve got you covered.