Convert between EDIFACT, VDA, XML, X12, FlatFile and more

Electronic data transmission is a central pillar in today's business world. The days when business documents could not be transmitted and processed digitally are largely gone. From enterprise resource planning to accounting to ERP systems, a wide variety of applications and systems today rely on digital data transfer. The challenge, however, is to ensure that these diverse, often industry-specific systems can communicate with each other.

For this reason, EDI standards have been developed on a global level that specify exactly how the transmitted EDI data is to be structured. Well-known examples are EDIFACT, VDA or ANSI ASC X.12. These standards represent, so to speak, the "languages" in which different systems can "talk" to each other. It should be noted, however, that not every industry uses the same standards as others, and not every ERP system "understands" every standard. Some applications have their own data format, for example iDoc, their own XML formats or their own flat file formats, and do not understand any of these standards at all.

You may be able to dictate to some of your business customers that they must use a format that your system can process. Others, however, might dictate to you the standard in which you must exchange data with them. If your system cannot process or generate the required format, a problem arises.

The solution to this problem is provided by an EDI converter that can translate different formats into each other. For this purpose the Module EDI for !MC5 contains such an EDI converter. With its help you can create rules, so called mappings, by means of a graphical interface, which can translate one data format into any other. !MC5 supports all common standard formats like EDIFACT, VDA, ODETTE, ANSI ASC X.12 and others. On the in-house side, any self-defined FlatFile or XML formats can be used, so that you can connect any system.

Sending and receiving messages adapted by the EDI converter is also easy with !MC5: !MC5 supports a variety of common transmission methods for the exchange of EDI and other data, such as OFTP2 and AS2. Both conversion and transmission can be fully automated and require no user intervention.

With !MC5 you are able to create an unlimited number of mappings and define your own FlatFile and XML formats according to your needs. All mappings and formats can be created and edited independently. Connecting new business partners or even changing your own internal system to a new application with new data formats is no longer a problem with !MC5.

If you need support, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are gladly at your disposal.

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