In the retail sector, everything revolves around timing. An order placed too late, a delivery that is not confirmed, an invoice that does not match what arrived at the loading dock: each of these situations costs time, money, and goodwill. Yet, the communication between retailers and their suppliers at many companies still takes place via email, PDF attachments, or Excel files that go back and forth between people manually retyping what a system should actually send by itself.
ctrl integrations guided a large Belgian retailer in the toy and family sector through a thorough digitalisation of that communication. The goal was clear: to fully automate the processing of orders, order confirmations, delivery notes, and invoices between the retailer's ERP system and the back-office systems of its suppliers.
What is EDI and why does it matter?
EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange, the standardised exchange of business documents between computer systems. Instead of an employee printing an order, composing an email, and sending a PDF, one system communicates directly with another. The message is structured, standardised, and automatically processed on the receiving end. No manual recoding, no delays due to unread mailboxes, no errors from double entry.
In international trade, and certainly in the toy sector with its strongly seasonal peaks, this difference is not trivial. When hundreds of orders are sent each week to dozens of suppliers, manual processing is not a sustainable approach.
"The question was not whether EDI was meaningful for this customer. The question was how to roll it out to suppliers, each with their own systems, their own formats, and their own pace of digitalisation."
The challenge: each supplier is different
What made this project complex was not the technology itself. It was the diversity of counterparties. Each supplier has its own ERP system, its own preference for communication channel, and sometimes its own interpretation of what a "standard" EDI message should contain. One supplier works via a secure SFTP channel, another expects messages via AS2, a third has its own portal. Some suppliers were already advanced in their EDI maturity, while others were starting almost from scratch.
ctrl integrations handled the entire onboarding process: from the technical integration to the functional alignment of what each message type must contain. Which fields are required? What happens if an order confirmation differs from the original order? How do we handle cancellations, partial deliveries, or invoices with price discrepancies? These are questions you answer together with the customer and the supplier, not just behind a screen.
The message types that were central
The integration process included the four most critical documents in a purchasing process. The order itself: the retailer's system automatically sends a structured message to the supplier as soon as a purchase order is created. The order confirmation: the supplier electronically responds with a confirmation, including any discrepancies in quantities or delivery dates, which is automatically fed back to the ERP. The delivery note: when goods are dispatched, the supplier sends a detailed overview of what is on the way, so the retailer can prepare for receipt. And finally, the invoice: electronic, structured, and directly linked to the corresponding order and delivery for automatic three-way matching.
Result: less manual work, more control
After the rollout, both the retailer and the involved suppliers noticed an immediate difference in the processing of their daily communications. Orders are confirmed more quickly. Discrepancies between order and delivery are automatically flagged. Invoice processing is faster because the data arrives already structured. And the team on the retail side spends less time following up on individual emails and more time monitoring the supply chain as a whole.
What this process teaches about EDI implementations
An EDI project is rarely purely technical. The technology is the easiest part. The real work lies in coordination: understanding how the other party structures its processes, what its system expects, and where the interfaces with the customer’s workflows lie. ctrl integrations takes on the role of both process facilitator and technical integrator.
This also means that every EDI project is customised, even when the underlying standards are the same. The standard describes the envelope. What is inside that envelope, and how both sides handle it, determines the success of the integration.
Does your organization have suppliers or customers with whom messaging is still handled manually? Or do you already have a partial EDI environment but are running into issues with specific partners or message types? Contact ctrl integrations for an exploratory discussion.