Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the fastest, easiest, and most productive way to conduct business with the transportation, warehousing and logistics industry. Computer-to-computer communication eliminates the need to fax documents and provides a complete and comprehensive audit. Traditionally, in the Public Warehousing industry, their have been two functions provided:

• Product Storage and Replenishment

• Product Processing and Transfer

The process is very simple. The warehouse works as a "middle man" in the logistics process. A manufacturer produces product and ships the product to the public warehouse. The public warehouse stores the product until the manufacturer requests that they ship it to another company.

Public Warehouses have heavily invested in EDI systems to automate the information flow to support these basic functions. While these interfaces were excellent for transacting business with large customers, they usually failed to include the small and medium sized business customer, who could not make the investment necessary to take advantage of EDI. In addition, these interfaces limited their focus to the Replenishment and Transfer Cycle. The following are the processes which were not automated with the advent of EDI in the warehousing industry:

In addition, as public warehouses change their market niche from simply “product” processors to “information” processors, they are striving to use the electronic transfer of business information to provide additional services to their clients. For example, forward thinking public warehouses are looking to provide:

Presently, inventory is being managed by the retailer or by the manufacturer. The newest trend is to have public warehouses to manage the inventory for the manufacturer. The process would have:

Another trend in public warehousing is to have the warehouse manage the logistics process. An increasing popular portion of the logistics process being taken over by public warehouses is the handling of Merchandise Returns from Retailers. For example the process would have:

The key to automating warehouse processes is to be able to have a solution that provides all parties the information that they need to do their job. This is where forward thinking public warehouses are looking to re-invest in EDI in solutions such as SoftCare’s TradeLink that can effectively manage their existing and new business models.