EDI and BIzTalk

Hi, Have anybody implemented EDI using BizTalk? Does it work or not?

Take a look at this article. http://www.navision.com/us/view.asp?documentID=807&categoryID=529 Team Technology out of Charlotte, NC did this implementation.

We actually aquired Commerce Gateway with the idea in mind we we’re going to use BizTalk to deal with one of our customers that was making “EDI over the internet” mandatory. We we’re told it would handle our needs. Commerce Gateway and BizTalk would handle our customers requirements (which we provided Navision). Our customers requirement was for a secure FTP client - basically to cut out the VAN’s. BizTalk does not (or at least did not) have a secure FTP client. You can, however, create all the EDI flat files you want. Just make sure that is your requirement and not how those files are transported. I guess what I’m saying is BUYER BEWARE when it comes to this product. It is a great product but you want to be absolutely sure what it will do for you. Make whomever is trying to sell it to you prove it will do what you want or need it to. In our case we were VERY disappointed.

Thank you Speetz, Our business totally depends on EDI. Most of US retail chains (MACYS, JCPENNY, WAL-MART, ZALES…) is our customers. What is the best EDI solution with Attain? Does anybody use Biz Talk with these retail chains?

Hi Valentin! We are “checking out” if MS BizTalk-Server could be used for our EDI-purposes, too! We allready had a presentation by our MS-Partner, and we think, that BTS will do it well [^] At the moment we compare BTS with an “EDI only”-solution … Maybe we could exchange further information when available!? Regards, Jörg

We use Lanham and associates EDI package and find it to work quite well for 850, 856 and 810. We are also a distributor to retail and also have their e-ship product. We face the ever growing list of customer labeling, packing list, invoice and EDI requirements from our customers. If you do pick/pack and a lot of FedEx, UPS or LTL shipments you really should check into it. It eliminated a number of our manual processes including putting freight charges on our customers invoices. (Billing is now just a batch post at the end of the day) As far as BTS and retail, we were hard pressed to find anyone going to XML anytime soon (except maybe Target). It seems the huge investment in EDI is hard to write-off or something… We have found a number of customers looking at secure FTP in the short run to cut out the VAN’s and get the biggest bang for the buck.

Hmm I was just looking at this thread and this one . And then realized how old it was. Although many though that XBRL and things like that would slowly move in on the EDI market, it looks like EDI is as strong as ever.

But really is Lanham the only significant Navision EDI vendor out there other than Commerce Gateway? Since that only covers North America, what are people doing about EDI in other countries.

Microsoft in Portugal has released a BizTalk module for Navision. That module supports invoicing and other features. It’s just an example and that’s why that don’t have support.

We us Lanham & Sterling Commerce Gentral Director. That was after we were quoted 50,000+ just for biztalk & setting it up.

50,000+ what? Baht? Would be interesting to know.

I looked for the proposal - to see what the breakdown was - but it was 2002-2003 and I can’t find it. Biztalk was proposed to us as a “Can handle any type of data communication you need it to do”. We needed just edi with a few people and We thought that price was outragesous at the time for the small need we had.

When you add it up - New Server, New OS, New Licenses, Biztalk, Professional Services to make it work with Nav & the training, etc etc. It can build up pretty quickly.

We are interested in Lanham EDI, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet, would you be a good reference?

Lanham is a proven technology we used at my old NAV reseller. Best for supplier side EDI but very good product.