Connecting You to Bidfood with EDI
Bidfood, a notable name in the realm of food service distribution, stands as a pivotal player in connecting an array of culinary delights to businesses and institutions. With a history rooted in serving diverse gastronomic needs, Bidfood has grown to become a leading distributor of food, beverages, and related products across a wide spectrum of industries. Bidfood plays a vital role in supplying restaurants, hotels, healthcare facilities, and more with the essential ingredients for success. As a trusted partner in culinary provision, Bidfood’s comprehensive offerings, efficient logistics, and dedication to sustainable practices continue to shape the culinary landscape by ensuring that every meal, event, or dining experience is a culinary triumph.
Bidfood is responsible for supplying over 10,000 products to more than 45,000 businesses and caterers, so it comes as no surprise they turned to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to aid in improving the efficiency of their supply chain. Although Bidfood hasn’t mandated that suppliers need to use EDI to connect and transmit documents, it does help in making communication more effective.
Bidfood’s Onboarding Process
The first step to getting you set up to trade via EDI with Bidfood is to ensure that your trading relationship has been confirmed with them. If you aren’t already a supplier, Bidfood has a supplier site dedicated to making sure you have the best chance of becoming a supplier and taking you through their process.
Once your supplier relationship has been confirmed, the Bidfood team will give you access to their online portal. Within the Bidfood supplier portal, you will be able to review and download important documentation that will aid in ensuring a smooth and efficient set-up process. Once Bidfood presents you with your unique supplier code, we ask that you keep this handy as it will make the next steps of your EDI journey easier.
Our Onboarding Process
Leveraging the capabilities of our Netix platform, we can facilitate your connection with Bidfood. Our suite of options encompasses Netix One. a user-friendly web-based solution tailored for small enterprises embarking on the start of their EDI journeys with trading partners. On the other hand, Netix Flow, our advanced offering, brings enhanced capabilities by seamlessly integrating with your existing systems—be it ERP, e-commerce, inventory, or WMS—automating critical manual processes. After determining the solution that best aligns with your business requisites, it’s imperative to share details with our Projects Team, including your:
- Supplier code
Bidfood requests that suppliers wanting to trade via EDI use an AS2 connector. AS2 (Applicability Statement 2) is a widely used protocol for secure and reliable data exchange over the Internet designed especially for business-to-business (B2B) data interchange. Using your supplier code, we can set this up quickly and easily for you. For more information about AS2 connectors, why not check out our EDI glossary?
Bidfood has adopted the Tradacoms standard as its preferred method for conducting trade. To engage in seamless message exchange through their AS2 connection, it is imperative to employ the Tradacoms EDI standard. However, our proficiency and adaptability allow us to optimize this connection according to your business by adeptly translating these EDI messages into other formats that might better align with how you operate.
The message types we can set up to get you trading with Bidfood:
- Invoices
- Purchase Orders
- Credit Notes
To expedite your trading capabilities with Bidfood, we are committed to ensuring a streamlined, prompt, and uncomplicated EDI connection process. That’s why we have pre-configured EDI maps for your trading partners. This means, a piece of your connection is already established and ready to connect you to Bidfood.
Upon gathering all the information and configuring all elements, we will adhere to our stringent testing protocol. Our dedicated Installation team meticulously validates and tests your connection, verifying the successful exchange of all agreed-upon EDI messages with Bidfood. Their expertise guarantees that your Netix solution operates precisely as intended, establishing a seamless and dependable EDI setup.
We want to guarantee your triumph by diligently preparing your team ahead of your system’s launch. Through tailored training sessions, we equip all crucial team members with the essential tools for optimal Netix utilisation. These training modules are thoughtfully structured to deliver comprehensive guidance, cultivating a profound familiarity with the platform and empowering your staff with the prowess to maximise their utilisation of Netix.
Upon the culmination of testing and training, we will coordinate the official “Go Live” date for your connection. At this pivotal interval, our support team will initiate contact to introduce themselves, ready to address any queries that might arise in the future.
Then you will be fully equipped to initiate trading with Bidfood via EDI.
Benefits of using Netix to connect to Bidfood:
- A simplified EDI procedure resulting in faster and more accurate data transmission.
- Netix’s scalable architecture allows for rises in trading volumes as your organisation expands, without affecting the system’s performance.
- Netix lowers operating costs related to data processing and order management by eliminating manual activities and errors.
- Transaction processing is accelerated to provide timely order fulfilment, prompt invoicing, and quick payments.
Check out our connection process with Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and more.
Why you should choose Cegedim e-business
We understand that EDI can be difficult to understand let alone navigate the set-up process and we recognise the challenges associated with it, that’s why we are dedicated to making electronic trading easier for you. With Cegedim e-business, you will have a committed Netix specialist who will accompany you through every step. They are fully equipped to ensure you have a seamless onboarding process, enabling a swift and successful setup for electronic trading with Bidfood.
Our pricing structure has been carefully created with future growth and flexibility in mind. Due to its adaptability, it can accommodate any requirements from Bidfood as well as adjustments and alterations that come as a result of the changing nature of your needs. Over the past year alone, we have noticed top organisations across a variety of industries have made changes to their EDI requirements. In the case that Bidfood modifies the EDI standard they use or require you to start using documents like ASNs (Advance Shipping Notices), you would be protected under our pricing policy from having to pay any additional development costs that would otherwise result in having to rewrite your EDI connection.
We are here for you as you start your EDI journey with Bidfood, offering you guidance and customised solutions to benefit your business. Talk to one of our specialists today and we can get connected to Bidfood together.