Insight Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)/Business-to-Business (B2B)

What types of documents can Insight enable via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)/Business-to-Business (B2B)?

Our fully customizable e-procurement platform, insight.com, supports EDI for transmitting various documents, including:

Orders
Order Acknowledgements
Advanced ship notices (ASN)
Invoices
API interchange (Please note that Insight only supports Order Create and Order Status with our API at this time. We do not allow an API search connection to our database.)

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a standardized method for exchanging data via any electronic means. By adhering to the same standard, two different companies or organizations — even in two different countries — can electronically exchange documents, such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices.

What are Insight’s Methods of Shopping (Parts, Pricing and Order Creation)?

Insight’s methods for shopping/purchasing include a Punch-Out Catalog and Hosted Catalog

Punch-Out Catalog

1. The punch-out catalog will connect to your insight.com account where you can:

Search for parts
Use company standards that are set up in our Client Management Tool (CMT) to create a cart
Access quote history to load a quote into your cart that sales may have created for you

2. Once your cart is created, the punch-out setup will submit the cart at checkout back to your system or through your third-party provider’s system to go through any approval processes you have in place.

3. After all approvals are completed, the PO is created and transmitted to Insight electronically (via cXML or X12 EDI language).

4. The transmission is received in a translator that is set up to recognize you, based on specific credentials sent on the order.

5. The order is translated to an Intermediate Document (IDOC) and delivered to your account in SAP.

Hosted Catalog

The hosted catalog is a limited list of 30K parts or fewer. Therefore, we cannot provide our entire list of products.

1. Insight requires the list of parts to be included in your catalog.

2. We create the catalog list as a report to pull the product information and current pricing from SAP on a regular schedule (weekly, bi-monthly or monthly).

3. The report is delivered to the sales team.

4. The sales team copies the data into your specified template and either:

emails it to you to load into your system, or
loads the catalog for you into a designated platform.

5. Using your catalog, search for parts and create an order that would then be electronically transmitted to Insight.

6. The transmission is received by our translator and the order is sent to SAP.

How do clients connect to Insight?

Clients connect to Insight through a direct interchange with our system, which can be set up with the appropriate resources, or an application software program like PeopleSoft can be employed. In both cases, a technical EDI team will need to set up the interchange and work with Insight to test the connections.

Typically, clients engage a third-party provider (Ariba, Coupa, OSN, GHX, JAGGAER, etc.) to set up the connection with us for transactions. Technical support will be provided by the thirdparty provider, with you paying a fee for using their system. Insight also pays a fee to transact through the third-party provider’s platform.

The connection to transmit orders is most often done through an HTTPS URL, but some clients submit EDI documents through OpenText, an AS2 connection, or they can also be delivered via an SFTP server or email.

Provide a list of available Web Service/APIs and specifications.

Insight supports integration to ServiceNow with four APIs — Order Placement, Status Update, Tracking and Invoice Status. Regarding catalog support, we provide content via flat files that clients can load into their ServiceNow system.

We also support other mechanisms of data transfer such as EDI, cXML and flat files through SFTP.

Insight also has experience integrating with leading e-procurement solutions (e.g., SAP, Ariba, Coupa, Oracle and more). We can also work with clients to support additional and proprietary environments. Industry Standard Integration Formats / Methods Supported include cXML, XML, OCI, EDI and xCBL.

Our EDI offering supports the standards developed and maintained by the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12. These standards are designed to work across industry and company boundaries.

What are the benefits of using EDI?

The benefits of using Electronic Data Interchange are numerous, including:

Reduced expenses
Speed
Elimination of paper documents
Automation
Accuracy

What’s the difference between EDI and B2B transactions?

The difference between EDI and B2B is that EDI is based on a one-to-one connection between a buyer and a seller, whereas B2B procurement supports numerous online exchanges like third-party companies, such as the Ariba through cXML technology.