The PO-MSG-ASN cycle

A great place to start with EDI is to automate purchase order pickup and processing. The obvious benefit here is to remove the tedious and error prone process of manually keying sales orders from Foodstuffs.

While Foodstuffs will always send orders to the eXchange using our Foodstuffs article numbers, Retail Unit GTINs, and Foodstuffs store codes, the eXchange can translate these data elements into your preferred output (such as your own product or customer / store codes). This means that you can process orders with your own product codes and customer codes. You just need to ensure these codes exist at the eXchange to inform the translation process. Accuracy in product and store codes will make your EDI implementation much more efficient.

Foodstuffs have some business requirements for order responses and shipping information. If you're automating the PO pickup, you'll also need to automate the MSG (order response) and ASN (shipping details) file drop-off. For this reason, we treat the PO, MSG and ASN as a single business process cycle. This cycle can be implemented as a standalone project. As invoices and credits are uncoupled from POs at the eXchange, they can be implemented in a separate project.

In the sections below we expand on the schema and implementation details for each filetype in this cycle.

For further information about each filetype please see: