Another email lands in your inbox—this time from one of your trading partners, Perfection Construction, announcing new EDI requirements. You’ll get to it later… right? But before you know it, a month has passed, and now those changes go live tomorrow. Meanwhile, sales is pressuring you to set up a new trading partner, accounts receivable needs help tracking down unpaid invoices, and your CFO is asking why cash flow is behind schedule.
Sound familiar? If you work in EDI implementation, you’re juggling mapping updates, trading partner compliance, system integrations, and troubleshooting—often all at once. Without a clear strategy for prioritizing EDI tasks, things fall through the cracks, causing chargebacks, delays, and unnecessary stress.
That’s why following structured EDI implementation guidelines is essential. A couple of months ago, we had a blog on knowing your customer’s EDI guidelines (requirements) so now let’s talk about prioritizing workload and how those EDI requirements fit into that.
Maybe you’re the IT Director overseeing 5-10 people, maybe it’s just you and another person in the IT department, or maybe you’re on your own! Regardless of your responsibility level, you first need to make a list of what needs to get done and delegate what you can.
To help you manage your EDI workload, here are five steps to prioritizing your tasks:
Step 1: Make a Comprehensive List of EDI Tasks
The first step in EDI implementation is organization. Before tackling any tasks, get everything written down—including routine processes, upcoming projects, and any unexpected issues.
- Leave time for the unexpected issues. This is probably the number one thing in EDI. I cannot tell you how many times I think I’m going to work on a particular task, only to be blindsided by three emergencies.
- Daily checking for errors, logs, etc. – do not forget this as a task. Sometimes this might take ten minutes a day, sometimes two hours. Keep track of how long it takes you and give yourself an average a day allotment.
- List all the open tasks that are current and put them in order of their due dates.
Step 2: Categorize Tasks by Priority
Now that you have a list, categorize each task based on urgency. Your EDI implementation guidelines should distinguish between:
Critical Tasks – Chargeback issues, transaction failures, or mapping errors that prevent partners from receiving documents correctly.
Important Tasks – Trading partner testing, onboarding new partners, or ensuring compliance with upcoming EDI implementation changes.
Low-Priority Tasks – Internal process optimizations, documentation updates, and non-urgent training initiatives.
For example, if failing to meet a trading partner’s EDI requirements results in delays or lost revenue, it’s critical. If an update improves efficiency but doesn’t impact transactions immediately, it’s important but not urgent.
Step 3: Assess the Value of Each Task
Before diving into EDI tasks, ask yourself these questions:
What’s the financial impact?
- Chargebacks from trading partners = Lost revenue
- Eliminating manual order entry = Time & cost savings
Will this task improve efficiency?
- If you implement the trading partner for EDI, will it minimize keying orders into your ERP potentially with mistakes from human entry? Do you have to email, fax or snail mail invoices? That takes time and money. Do you have to key online shipment information into a Web-portal? If it’s lots of manual work with many orders, maybe this trading partner would be good to get on EDI ASAP.
Could delaying this task result in business loss?
- Missing an EDI compliance deadline could result in a partner dropping you.
- Slow onboarding could mean losing business to competitors.
Step 4: Organize Tasks by Effort Required
Some EDI tasks require significant effort, while others take only a few minutes. A great EDI implementation strategy balances both:
- Sometimes it is better to just get a quick task done right away. Is it just a 5-minute mapping change? It gets something off your list. It’s good for your morale to have one less “thing” to do. At least I feel that way.
- Do you need to rewrite a big process of your ERP to fit in the needs of this trading partner? Should you wait? Or should you do it now because it potentially could be an issue for many more trading partners?
Step 5: Delegate & Know When to Postpone
You don’t have to handle every EDI task alone. If certain responsibilities can be shifted to other teams, take advantage of those opportunities.
- Does Emma from Customer Service keep asking you to check on the raw EDI data about a carrier code? Why not give her the tools to do the job herself? For example, in Liaison’s ECS software, you can set up a user to have read-only access. You could train her to go to Data Administrator and find the purchase order herself and look up the carrier code.
- You do all the mapping, but can you train another person in the IT department? Not only will you have another resource, you’ll also have a backup for emergencies, sick kids or vacations. Do you really want to sign into the server when you’re supposed to be enjoying your vacation?
- Is this trading partner really important to get up and running? Have sales do a review of their business with your company. Do they do hundreds of orders a month or is it just a few a year? Does the volume justify getting this done right now or can you postpone? I had a client tell me a salesperson wanted this trading partner up on EDI ASAP. Come to find out in two years, they only had placed four orders worth $1,000.
- Do you have an ERP upgrade coming up? A server migration? Maybe all EDI changes and/or developments needs to be suspended until those situations are completed.
- Lastly, have you reached out the trading partner to ask if you can have an extension? I’ve found that most trading partners are willing to give you some more time. They are usually understanding of time constraints.
Streamlining EDI Implementation Through Managed Services
Hopefully these suggestions will help you prioritize your EDI tasks. The idea here is to work smarter rather than harder! Of course, all these tasks can be handled by a good EDI service provider in a managed services scenario. (wink wink) Now get to your son’s baseball game…this might be the time he hits a home run.
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