Conclusion

Management often assumes EDI is a standard way to exchange business documents as it was advertised and intended.  Surrounding the standards are still customer specific processes which require careful integration and experience to create and operate as a smooth, accurate flow.  Most ERP systems fail to do this simply because they were designed to reflect your processes and not the processes of your customers.  EDI can work and work well but it requires a different approach than the one used by most companies with EDI.