Electronic data interchange (EDI) provides a means for information to flow between entities. Companies use EDI to provide enhanced service for their customers and partners, by reducing transaction times and costs. Other benefits of EDI include the reduction of paperwork and better inventory management. When EDI is wed with XML (Extensible Markup Language), structured data can be exchanged over the Internet.

In other words: say goodbye to those crates of paper as the machines do all of the heavy lifting.

While the basics of EDI have been around for more than thirty years, the last decade has seen the greatest surge in EDI use, due to the ubiquity of the Internet … [EDI, Continued]