How to Connect with B2B and EDI Partners Over APIs
If you distribute your products through retail channels, chances are you already have some sort of EDI solution in place to communicate with your trading partners — whether that's a VAN, a web portal, or a true B2B/EDI file transfer solution.
But increasingly, retailers are adopting APIs to manage B2B document exchanges, such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notifications. Many legacy and popular EDI solutions do not enable trading partners to connect to these new API driven marketplaces and storefronts. However, ArcESB makes it easy for your organization to connect with trading partners using APIs and EDI alike.
Here, we cover where APIs are becoming a popular replacement for EDI and how you can leverage ArcESB to easily communicate with partners using APIs for B2B communications.
Major Trading Partners and eCommerce Platforms Using APIs
The use of APIs for trading partner communications is a growing trend. You'll need to adopt API communications to connect with several key EDI partners:
- Amazon (Seller Central)
- Walmart
- Home Depot
- Lowe's
- Wayfair
- Shopify
- Magento
You can communicate with all of these major B2B partners and many more using APIs. Though some of these are primarily brick and mortar have also built online storefronts to compete with Amazon and these also rely on APIs. while Wayfair still allows its partners to connect EDI, it not only gives its partners the opportunity to connect using APIs but incentivizes that switch by displaying the products of vendors that use APIs higher in the search results than those using EDI.
Additionally, if you're working with a small to medium-sized companies that currently lack EDI processes and want to automate your intercompany communication with them, consider an API-driven process. Implementing API communications is much faster and easier than using traditional EDI. While EDI relies on complex, opaque document formats and thus requires EDI specialists, many developers today use technologies such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), Open Data Protocol (OData) and Swagger Open API Specification that make API creation faster and easier. You can even use CData API Server to generate your own company API in minutes.
ArcESB Makes API Integration Easy
ArcESB provides a simple visual integration canvas that allows you to see and manage all your API partner integrations. This canvas includes the following capabilities:
Workspaces
ArcESB allows you to create and manage individual workflows using the Workspaces capability. Workspaces provide a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy for you to organize and configure your integrations and insert connectors.
Out-of-the-Box and Standard Connectors
Easy-to-use REST API and SOAP connectors allow you to connect to a wide range of front-end web services. We also offer out of the box connectors that enable you to connect to specific platforms, such as Shopify or Amazon Seller Central.
Webhooks
ArcESB's built-in Webhook Connector can receive inbound API requests so you can automatically pull in purchase orders or other documents instead of having to go out and run a query to access these documents.
Webinar: How to Integrate With Your Partner's APIs
Not only does ArcESB enable you to exchange documents using both APIs and EDI, but it also offers comprehensive security and built-in encryption. To see how you can set up API-based partner document exchanges and automate your B2B integrations in minutes, check out our webinar: How to Integrate with Your Partner's APIs.