EDI with File Conversion

Requirements

Our clients needed to receive transport jobs electronically, however the outlay of developing a new interface for each client for use with their existing transport management software was too cost prohibitive. Transfocus’ first brief was to develop a simple import system (Electronic Data Interchange, EDI), a system that would allow their sales people to promote the EDI capability with the confidence that any format could be accommodated with minimal setup costs.

The Transfocus Solution

To achieve these goals we wrote software specifically designed to map any customer file format to a single format, so that file could be easily imported to our clients’ systems. We achieved a successful outcome for our clients by reducing the setup cost from what previously a minimum of $3000 to between $100 and $500 per file format.

One of our clients was also able to develop a standard format that they could provide to their clients, as well the tools needed to make minor changes themselves, and enable the whole solution to be managed internally by the client.

Transfocus has gone on to use this EDI (file import / export) solution for a whole range of clients and applications, and it has since been developed to become a completely standalone product. The EDI file converter supports received files in all the common formats, such as CSV, TXT, XML, files that can be converted to any format required. With our EDI solution files can also be sent and retrieved automatically from email, or sent server-to-server via FTP.