EDIFACT (UN/EDIFACT)
UN/EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) is the United Nations-maintained international standard for structured business-to-business messaging. EDIFACT defines the messages (ORDERS, INVOIC, DESADV and many others), the syntax for encoding them, and the protocols for exchanging them. EDIFACT dominates B2B EDI in Europe across automotive, retail, utilities and logistics, with North America historically using ANSI ASC X12 as the regional alternative.
Common EDIFACT messages
- ORDERS — purchase order from buyer to supplier
- ORDRSP — order acknowledgement from supplier to buyer
- DESADV — despatch advice / advance shipping notification (ASN)
- RECADV — receiving advice from buyer confirming receipt
- INVOIC — invoice from supplier to buyer
- REMADV — remittance advice from buyer indicating payment
- DELFOR — delivery forecast for JIT supply scenarios
- DELJIT — fine-grained delivery call-off for JIT operations
- INVRPT — inventory report for VMI scenarios
- QUOTES — quotation
- PAYMUL — multiple-payment instruction
Industry subsets
The full EDIFACT message-library is enormous. Industries have defined subsets constraining which fields and codes are used in their specific context. Notable subsets. VDA (German automotive): VDA 4905 (delivery instructions), VDA 4915 (fine-scheduling), VDA 4938 (delivery note) — pre-dates EDIFACT but increasingly aligned. ODETTE: European automotive (broader than VDA). EANCOM: GS1-maintained subset for retail and consumer-goods supply chains — dominant in DACH retail (Edeka, REWE, Lidl). CEFACT/EDIFICE: electronics industry. EDIPAP: paper industry. EDITEX: textile. UTILMD: utility-industry message family used in German Marktkommunikation (electricity, gas market processes). Each subset has its own version history and update rhythm; staying current requires dedicated EDI expertise or managed-service providers.
Transport mechanisms
EDIFACT messages travel through various transport channels. OFTP / OFTP2: Odette File Transfer Protocol — dominant in automotive supply chains. OFTP2 adds TLS encryption and replaces the older ISDN-based OFTP. AS2 (Applicability Statement 2): HTTP-based with S/MIME encryption; common in retail (mandated by Walmart) and increasingly used in DACH automotive. AS4: WS-* based successor to AS2, used in some industries (utility-market communication). FTP/SFTP: simpler legacy transport, declining for security reasons. API gateways: increasingly, modern EDI flows wrap EDIFACT in REST APIs for cloud-native integration. VAN (Value-Added Network): third-party network providers (GXS / OpenText, IBM Sterling, SAP Business Network) provide managed EDI-message routing.
Managed EDI providers
Most DACH mid-market companies use managed-EDI service providers rather than building in-house expertise. Leading DACH providers. SEEBURGER (German-founded, strong automotive and retail), ecosio (Austrian, broad mid-market), Crossinx (now part of UnifiedPost), Crossgate (now SAP Business Network), B2Bnet, Esker, OpenText Business Network (formerly GXS), IBM Sterling Commerce, Comarch EDI. Selection criteria: industry coverage (does the provider have your customer base?), partner-onboarding speed, monitoring and exception-handling, integration with your specific ERP. Pricing: monthly subscription typically 30,000-300,000 EUR per year depending on volume, plus per-message fees. For mid-market automotive Tier-2/3 suppliers, managed EDI is operationally essential and the cost is well-justified.
Related Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
Is EDIFACT being replaced by APIs?
Slowly and selectively. New B2B integrations increasingly use REST APIs, especially in e-commerce and platform-based commerce. Established EDIFACT flows in automotive, retail and utilities persist for the foreseeable future because changing them requires coordinated change across trading-partner ecosystems. The two coexist for years to decades.
Can we run EDIFACT in-house?
Possible but rarely worth it. The breadth of EDIFACT messages, subsets, dialects and customer-specific variants is too broad for in-house teams to cover reliably alongside operations. Managed-EDI services handle dialects, onboarding and monitoring for a fraction of the in-house cost. In-house EDI is feasible mostly for SAP S/4HANA shops with dedicated integration teams of 3+ people.
What is the role of Peppol in DACH EDI?
Peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) provides an alternative network for structured business documents, particularly e-invoicing. Peppol BIS 3.0 is the dominant B2G e-invoicing standard in many EU markets. DACH adoption is growing as e-invoicing mandates expand; Peppol coexists with EDIFACT rather than replacing it.