EDI In The Supply Chain

I am working through my course’s assigned readings and came across the mention of EDI, also known as Electronic Data Interchange. The section was on supply chain integration methods and EDI was spotlighted. EDI is passing parsed/formatted data from one entity to another. It can be anything from shipping notices, invoices or purchase orders. They are typically generated from an ERP and passed to another organization’s ERP. There is some standardization like X12, but it also seems most are vendor specific.

Honestly this entire tech stack seems long in the tooth but there are no alternatives. Logically they make sense. Batch processed business documents sent electronically is a perfect way to communicate data assuming it is delivered securely. I would think if given the chance to build an  EDI system out, someone would choose a RESTful API instead, but I do not see evidence of that in this sector. It seems that organizations are keeping their EDI because they are ingrained into what they do and putting APIs over top for real time reporting is probably what will remain occurring in the near future.