Advantages Over Paper Systems
EDI and other similar technologies save a company money by providing an alternative to, or replacing, information flows that require a great deal of human interaction and materials such as paper documents, meetings, faxes, etc. Even when paper documents are maintained in parallel with EDI exchange, e.g. printed shipping manifests, electronic exchange and the use of data from that exchange reduces the handling costs of sorting, distributing, organizing, and searching paper documents. EDI and similar technologies allow a company to take advantage of the benefits of storing and manipulating data electronically without the cost of manual entry. Another advantage of EDI is reduced errors, such as shipping and billing errors, because EDI eliminates the need to rekey documents on the destination side. One very important advantage of EDI over paper documents is the speed in which the trading partner receives and incorporates the information into their system thus greatly reducing cycle times. For this reason, EDI can be an important component of just-in-time production systems.
According to the 2008 Aberdeen report "A Comparison of Supplier Enablement around the World", only 34% of purchase orders are transmitted electronically in North America. In EMEA, 36% of orders are transmitted electronically and in APAC, 41% of orders are transmitted electronically. They also report that the average paper requisition to order costs a company $37.45 in North America, $42.90 in EMEA and $23.90 in APAC. With an EDI requisition to order costs are reduced to $23.83 in North America, $34.05 in EMEA and $14.78 in APAC.
Read more about this topic: Electronic Data Interchange
Famous quotes containing the words advantages over, advantages, paper and/or systems:
“There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“[T]here is no Part of the World where Servants have those Privileges and Advantages as in England: They have no where else such plentiful Diet, large Wages, or indulgent Liberty: There is no place wherein they labour less, and yet where they are so little respectful, more wasteful, more negligent, or where they so frequently change their Masters.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“What is to be done with people who can’t read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)