What is a trading partner in EDI?
A trading partner is any business you exchange EDI documents with — a retailer, a distributor, a 3PL, or a carrier. Each one publishes its own specification: which transaction sets it uses, which optional fields it requires, how it formats identifiers, and what its acknowledgment deadlines are. Two retailers using the same 850 standard will still need separate maps.
This is why EDI cost scales with partner count rather than order volume. Adding a second retailer is a new integration project, not a configuration change, under most traditional EDI pricing.
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