Speak the Language of EDI with Power Automate

One of the greatest burdens on financial departments is the inefficient, slow finance systems which consume great amounts of effort and energy from the team. For up to 41% of businesses, paper and manual processes are still a constant strain on workloads, as processing their purchase orders and invoices is a mammoth task. Alongside this, being beholden to companies who handle this process can be a costly outgoing which could be invested elsewhere.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been fundamental in taking that burden, through a standardised communication format which removes the archaic manual process. In short, EDI is used to send and receive governed documents for exchange from business partners and internal systems within minutes. Where human errors are a constant risk, some businesses are already seeing a reduction of 80% in document errors thanks to EDI! Alongside this, EDI speeds up purchase orders and invoicing timeframes, provides accuracy and auditing records, as well as freeing time for employees to focus on more valuable tasks.

So, what’s the drawback? While EDI has many benefits, the pricing from third-party interchange systems can deter small and medium businesses from investing in this key solution. As well as this, our customers have been committed to these third-parties, feeling the strain as prices are hiked for system updates. For this reason, OfficeLabs have been approached numerous times to create a tailored solution. So, that’s what we did.

Power Automate is one of Microsoft’s most powerful tools in automating processes and paving the way for EDI translations. Using this, OfficeLabs have successfully translated customers’ XML purchase orders through an EDI workflow in their chosen translation / format. The only touch point required is the SharePoint location of saved documentation to trigger the translation workflow, with the final output being saved into the appropriate folder. To take this solution even further, some of our customers have even expanded to include notifications, so when a document is translated and saved, they receive a link directly to it in SharePoint.

Take a look at EDI in action:

– SharePoint Syntex – a content understanding & processing service

– The New AI Builder for SharePoint Syntex