It can often be a struggle for suppliers to implement EDIFACT messages, especially for the first time.

Following the successful experience of Odette Sweden with the suppliers of Volvo and Scania over the past two years, Odette International is shortly to launch a new on-line portal where companies around the world can carry out a check of their JAIF Global Invoice and Global Despatch Advice messages before they go into service.

By encouraging their suppliers to use this service, customers will be relieved of time-consuming and frequently misunderstood communications with individual suppliers concerning the results of EDI tests.

Suppliers will receive understandable, reliable information, including indications of errors, for use in correcting their EDI implementation. They can gain their customer’s authorisation to send production messages sooner and thus benefit from accelerating the invoicing and/or despatch advice process.

The web-based validation of Global EDIFACT messages will become available by the end of February 2009 providing:

• A new value added service for our members
• Promotion of Global EDIFACT messages, including emerging markets
• Potential extension to include customer specific guidelines

The Odette Validation Portal is mainly aimed at those companies who want to be sure that the messages they are going to send - in a migration scenario, for example - are free of errors. The message sender can use the Odette Validation Portal service to validate messages, created by his EDI system, against the respective Global Automotive EDIFACT Message Implementation Guidelines. The system can also be used to check the quality of services provided by an external provider, e.g. when the EDI system has been set up or configured by an external service provider.

As a starting point, the available options are Global INVOIC (invoice message) and the Global DESADV (despatch advice message). These are the most frequently sent messages from the supplier to the customer.

The online availability facilitates the testing at the pace of the implementation project. In the test the user only interacts with the web portal, no test partner at the other end is required. Messages are simply uploaded to the system, and test reports are generated online. Thus, one can avoid the typical bottleneck situation that could often be faced with Help Desks.

Other benefits of the Portal include:

• 24/7 availability permits use in both national and international commerce
• Low-cost tool with high value benefits
• No installation or training costs for participants
• Time spent locating errors is drastically reduced by human readable custom error messages
• User-friendly solution increases user acceptance of EDI introduction or migration
• Web-based solution is easily accessible to SMEs
• Tests include syntax and business rules compliance checks
• Business rules are included in the tests to verify plausible content. This eliminates an error source that is especially troublesome and time-consuming to deal with
• Integrated human-readable documentation of the reference specification increases comprehension and accelerates troubleshooting.

The Portal is provided in cooperation with GEFEG, a Berlin based company who have supplied IT consultancy and EDIFACT tools to Odette for many years.

You can access the new service through the Odette home page and if you have any questions contact: info@odette.org

Access the service