ANALYSIS OF ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE (EDI) ADOPTION CHALLENGES AND BEST PRACTICES IN RETAIL SUPPLY CHAINS

Abstract

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been viewed as one of the dominant drivers of digital transformation in the supply chain in retail businesses by promoting automated and structured communication of documents like purchase orders, invoices, and shipment notices. It leads to efficiency in its operations, minimizes manual errors and shortens transaction cycles and increases visibility among supply chain partners. However, in spite of the advantages, proper implementation is difficult. Technical barriers, such as integration with legacy systems, non-uniform data standards, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, make deployment complicated. There are also organizational issues that are a barrier to adoption, such as a lack of skilled staff, workflow resistance, and a large initial investment. Also, external limitations like inadequate supplier preparedness, interoperability amongst various systems and vendor lock-in by proprietary solutions diminish scalability and cooperation. With the retail supply chains continually developing, the continuation of EDI is expected to make it more scalable, intelligent, and interoperable. Among them are the blockchain-based secure data exchange, AI-driven document automation and analytics, IoT-enforced real-time synchronization, and hybrid models that combine APIs with the conventional EDI frameworks. This progress is set to make EDI a more flexible and open system to the end-to-end digital retail ecosystems.