Are your current EDI workflows meeting your business requirements or following the same approach for all systems? In the world of advanced technology and the interconnected landscape, EDI plays an essential role in streamlining transactions between businesses and their trading partners. While Boomi EDI B2B integration offers advanced tools, customization workflow is something that can help you achieve your operational goals.

Learn more about how you can use the customization Boomi EDI workflow to maximise its benefits for data exchange and compliance with standard format.

What is Boomi EDI Integration Workflow?

Before heading to the Boomi EDI customization, understand what it is and how it can solve the problems of your business. EDI workflow is the Boomi solution to automate the exchange of documents like purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notifications with the trading partners. These workflows work on the transformation, routing, and delivery of EDI documents in the standard format.

Why customise Boomi EDI workflows?

Every business has unique processes and requirements; the one-size strategy doesn’t fit for all. Boomi EDI customization allows businesses:

• Alignment of the existing process with the EDI operations
• Improve the integration and data exchange between systems like ERP and CRM.
• Reduce the requirement of human intervention and error.
• Smooth communication with other partners
• Give data accuracy and comply with legal industry standards

Step-by-step Process to Customise Boomi EDI Integration

1.  Identify business requirements.

Begin the process by identifying the business requirements to customise the B2B EDI solution. This could include

• Customization of documents like invoices or purchase orders
• Specific data addition by trading partners
• Integrating existing systems like ERP and CRM with EDI.

Don’t forget to gather information from different departments like IT, Sales, Logistics, and Procurement to ensure that all business needs are included.

2.  Map EDI documents to your business processes.

The next step is to map the EDI documents for each business need. Boomi EDI B2B integration allows you to design the mappings and also translates the X12, EDIFACT, into the format of internal systems.

Process to Map Documents

• Define the source and target fields.
• Check whether the documents are in the right format.
• Add extra data fields required to complete the internal process.

This step ensures that EDI workflows are accurately integrated as per the business requirements.

3.  Leverage Boomi’s Process Builder for Workflow Customization

Process Builder of Boomi is an advanced tool to customise the EDI workflows. The drag-drop interface eases the workflow without requiring extensive coding.

Ways to customise your workflows include:

• Transform your incoming and outgoing EDI documents into the required format with mapping tools.
• Customise the workflow based on the requirements of the order or partner.
• Manage failed transactions and other alerts with custom error-handling logic
• Manage the document flow by adding steps like validation, transformation, or enrichment before sending the documents to the internal system.

4.  Boomi EDI Integration with Internal Systems

For a successful customization of Boomi EDI workflows, businesses need to integrate it with the existing internal system. Boomi supports systems like NetSuite, SAP, Salesforce, etc. It eases the process of EDI document exchange with the back office system.

For instance, when an order is received via EDI, it can be automatically navigated to the ERP system, which further triggers the inventory check, purchase confirmation, payment, and other business processes.

Boomi connectors ensure that your EDI documents are processed in real-time and give prompt responses to any kind of request.

5.  Customising EDI Document Standards and Formats

If you want to exchange documentation in the internal systems, the format should be changed as per the need. You can customise by creating or modifying the existing document in Boomi EDI B2B integration.

Consider this while working on formats.

• Focusing on the format while adding or removing data fields
• To match industry compliance, customise segments and loops within Boomi EDI.
• Look after the custom codes.

One of the biggest advantages of using Boomi is its ability to transform the format into different standards for each system.

6.  Setting Up Trading Partner-Specific Workflows

Every partner has different requirements, and it is necessary to create tailored workflows for them. The EDI customization allows you to set up a trading partner profile with different specifications like document formats, data transformation, etc.

This step includes:

• Creating partner-specific documents
• Conditional and custom workflows for different partners
• Custom alerts for errors to the respective partner.

This ensures workflow agility while with Boomi EDI integration without disrupting overall business operations.

7.  Monitoring and Optimising EDI Workflows

Once you’ve customised your Boomi EDI workflows, it’s important to monitor them closely to ensure they are running smoothly. Boomi provides dashboards and reporting tools that allow you to track document exchanges, monitor performance, and identify any errors or bottlenecks.

Focus on the areas like:

• Set up real-time error notification to respond and resolve the problem quickly.
• Regularly monitor the performance to ensure the efficiency of processing documents.
• Analyse the insights and create a strategy to optimise the workflow.

8.  Testing and Validation

Before deploying the EDI workflow, test and validate it using Boomi EDI integration built-in testing tools. These tools allow you to ensure that the workflow is working as per expectation.

Primary Testing Activities:

• Validate data mapping and format transformation.
• Testing the integration with existing systems like ERP
• Checking end-to-end transaction processes with trading partners.

Testing ensures that the workflow is accurate and error-free to avoid any delay in live data processing.

Conclusion

Boomi offers tools and technology to customise the EDI workflows for the specific business process. The customization of Boomi EDI B2B integration reduces the need for manual efforts, provides data accuracy, and ensures compliance with multiple trading partners.