EDI Standards and Technologies

What message standards are used?

Standards can be imagined like a spreadsheet where every 'cell' or element defines a part of the message, say the colour or quantity of an item on an Order. Both ends of the relationship need to agree the standard and implement it precisely.

The most common EDI standard in the UK is TRADACOMS, a set of message definitions laid down in 1982 by the UK retail industry to describe the data elements that are used to make up an EDI message. There are over 30 Tradacoms messages available (e.g. orders, invoices, delivery notes etc)

TRADACOMS is being slowly superseded by EDIFACT and its subsets - like EANCOM and ODETTE, which are capable of handling more complex messages and address more involved business processes like transportation and multiple currencies; in America and Canada there is also ANSI X12, which is simply another EDI standard.

It is increasingly likely that UK companies will need to support more than one standard in their EDI solution. It is also possible that other standards not mentioned here may be used in specific countries or industry sectors.