Advantages And Disadvantages of EDI Outsourcing For Employee Benefits

In healthcare, EDI has become quite a prominent entity as well as a necessity with time. The reason being, the increasing need for safety due to parallelly growing threats and hazardous possibilities like data leakage, data loss, data stealing, data manipulation, etc.

We couldn’t ignore the fact that the data stealers and spies are also making themselves familiar and learning with new technologies that we are thinking would save us from them.

Yes, the latest technologies ensure us the utmost safety due to the latest security patches and encryption methods that are very less known and used somewhere else. But they never guarantee the cent percent safety from every possible threat.

Electronic data interchange becomes a matter of thought for some corporate business owners due to the initial requirements EDI asks for. It is initially a bit costlier but could save a lot in the long run.

Look out some of the advantages and disadvantages to get more clear about EDI services and especially if they are outsourced from an EDI solutions provider-

Advantages of EDI Outsourcing Services

1. In the case of a business not possessing integration services, it is advisable to outsource EDI services. Sometimes, the integration becomes a bit troublesome and could hinder the business outcomes that might bring undesirable consequences.
   In such cases, EDI outsourcing is quite beneficial because all the technical matters are then handled by the EDI experts that are outsourced.
2. An economic advantage says that the cost required to hire the entire EDI staff would be saved. EDI being an in-demand technology is a bit costlier to set up from the zero levels i.e. in-house EDI services. However, there are things we should know before opting between in house and managed EDI services.
   The costing not just includes the remuneration for the EDI staff, but it covers the regular maintenance charges, the infrastructural cost, constant monitoring manpower, and required skill development, etc.
3. The best part is we are required to pay only for what we use and not for everything else that is just essential but not worth paying, that would be the case if we have an in-house EDI service.

Drawbacks of EDI Outsourcing Services

1. Vigilance would not be in our control; Yes, we can ask or raise the query but the parental control that is desirable sometimes would not be the case.
2. Service level agreements become an issue in the case of outsourcing sometimes. The case occurs when the EDI outsourcing service provider and your business are certainly in different time zones, which might result in delayed services and could result in penalties or fines, which is understandable but undesirable too.
3. Sometimes, if the services are unsatisfying, the migration costs quite high and the data becomes a subject to lose out possibly. The data becomes clumsy and troublesome to manage and secure meanwhile migration.
4. Outsourcing of EDI services is best when the trading partners are limited in numbers. Otherwise, the cost might equal the cost of deploying an in-house EDI service.
5. An EDI outsourcing might be cost-free for one-time set up and merely charge $25 up to more than a thousand dollars depending on the number of trading partners and volume of transactions per day.

Conclusively, it is important to figure out the requirements first, the number of total partners, the number of long-running subscribers, one time service seekers, etc.

The entire evaluation and analysis might require proper EDI consultation that companies like A3logics provide along with a guide to EDI deployment so that the least mistakes and appropriate decisions can be made.