EDI Systems

Initially, the formats of documents transmitted via EDI along with the standards were defined by the companies that exchanged the data. However, as EDI became more popular, it had to be globally standardized in order to be useful and functional. This gave rise to two standards that have been approved by the UN and the Federal Government of the USA. They are ANSI X12 and UN/EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport). Companies in the US use mainly the X12 standard, whereas EDIFACT has become universally accepted in other countries. However, the recent trend among EDI users is to make EDIFACT a fully global standard.