If you are new to the world of Electronic data interchange or EDI then you probably are also deciding on the kind of scenario that fits your business requirements. If you already use EDI and are looking to switch to a different solution, you will definitely be looking at the cost as a crucial factor while evaluating the top EDI solutions that you have shortlisted. But the biggest challenge for any software is that no cost for a solution is one-size-fits-all and it can be difficult to share a price that would work for all organizations.
At To-Increase, we’ve helped over 500+ customers streamline their business communications using our EDI Solution – EDI Studio for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Supply Chain Management, and through this blog, we hope to give you a ballpark of the investment needed for an EDI solution.
While it is crucial to evaluate the types of EDI solutions available in the market, it is also important to understand the ready offerings from the various types of EDI solution providers. In the end, you need to finalize and go with a solution that best compliments your business set-up and infrastructure.
What is the average cost of EDI solutions?
Based on some online research we found a wide range of prices mentioned for various vendors on Capterra. Some of these listings included just the EDI gateway, the EDI translation software, and the EDI solution, so it is difficult to gauge the average price of EDI software that facilitates EDI messaging. Some prices are mentioned as either per month or one-time fees, while some prices are per user based. These are also some external costs to consider if you decide to go with an indirect or hybrid scenario and will need to connect with a VAN/broker and may also need a translation service.
The one-time fees for an EDI solution ranged anywhere from 1000 euros to 20,000 euros, while the price range for one-month fees was listed as 350 euros but we do not know what that price excludes. However, it is important to note that these are starting price ranges and not all-inclusive of the several factors one needs to account for when implementing an EDI solution such as training, initial set-up, and other costs.
What are the factors that will affect the cost of EDI Studio?
Below are the factors to keep in mind while estimating the price for our EDI solution.
Will the deployment method impact the cost of the solution?
The deployment method will not impact licensing costs. However, our on-premise customers have to pay for a dedicated support plan if they decide they need one. All our cloud customers get the benefit of free access to the Essential support plan.
Does the kind of integration in terms of scale and number of partners affect the cost of the solution?
For EDI Studio, the number of trading partners does not impact the cost of the solution. However, you will have to account for an EDI gateway via a VAN/broker and implementation costs, plus costs per message. If your VAN/broker does not provide translation and non-EDI services, you would need to account for those too.
Although we do not provide VAN services, we do offer an end-to-end solution in partnership with TIE Kinetix called EDI-2-FLOW. TIE Kinetix offers non-EDI, translation services for EDI standards, and offers a gateway to connect to your trading partners.
Are there any other factors that impact the cost of the solution?
We do not charge for the number of messages you send using EDI Studio. The price of the solution is chargeable per legal entity or number of companies within F&SCM.
We charge a flat base price for the number of legal entities within D365 F&SCM. Additionally, the prices mentioned in this blog are based on our 3-year agreement.
What is the cost of EDI Studio?
We share the licensing, training, implementation, and support costs that together make up the cost of implementing the EDI Studio solution in the long run. No fine print or hidden costs other than the ones mentioned below. However, like we mentioned before, we cannot share an exact price for your organization unless we understand your exact needs, but we hope this section gives you a clear estimate range that you could work with.
What is the cost of our licensing fees?
Since EDI Studio is built on top of our integration platform Connectivity Studio, both solutions embedded within D365 F&SCM, you can use Connectivity Studio only for EDI purposes for the price of EDI Studio. The base cost for EDI Studio is €/$1600. Additionally, we charge per company, for 1-10 companies the cost is €/$450 per month, per company. For 11-20 companies the cost is €/$200 per month, and for more than 20 companies it is €/$150 per month. Since we follow a tiered pricing model, the price per company drops, when you add more companies.
However, for additional integration and data migration and integration engine, Connectivity Studio, our customers can purchase the solution separately. The capabilities of our integration and data migration tool extend far beyond EDI. Connectivity Studio can be used for large data imports and exports, for multiple environments under one company, and can integrate with almost any business system.
The base price of our application integration solution for D365 is €/$1300 per month. And the price per company is €/$350 for 1-10 companies, €/$150 for the 11th-20th company, and €/$100 for more than 20 companies per company, per month. The great news is that if you do decide to buy Connectivity Studio at the same time as EDI Studio or MDM Studio, we offer a 50% discount on Connectivity Studio.
We offer an application called Connectivity Monitor that can help you monitor the performance of your integrations and EDI messages. This monitoring tool is now available in the licensing costs of Connectivity Studio.
What training costs can you expect?
Based on our experience with new customers, we recommend the EDI Studio Enablement package to all our customers. This consists of
- Installation services
- Training sessions on our solution
- Hand-on workshops
- 1 Q&A session
To organize these sessions, we need some time for preparation and project coordination to understand your business requirements and work on our training sessions. Our charges are hour-based and we can share pricing based on your business case for training and implementation.
What kind of costs do they need to account for the implementation of software?
A lot of our customers that have technical guidance do not always opt for implementation services. However, for customers that need additional support, we provide installation assistance and guidance to help them get started with EDI Studio. For implementation support, project management costs are calculated at about 15% of total consulting hours.
We offer implementation support based on the customer’s requirements. The time taken for implementation and training could vary from a few days to a few weeks based on the project and business requirements.
We offer assistance in the setting up of basic interface messages, hands-on workshops, and preparation workshop sessions in addition to the training services mentioned above. We also provide analysis and diagnostic services at a high level that includes analysis of requirements, an overview of required interface messages, analysis of solution’s scope and the company’s architecture including review and documentation. The time for analysis and diagnosis varies based on the project and requirements.
Are there any costs for support?
Our subscription fees include a support plan for all our cloud customers. This is based on our Essential package, which includes access to our product documentation, upgrades, resolution of and responses to product-functionality-related questions, and 5 support tickets per solution.
For companies with a complex setup that need dedicated, full-time support, you can also consider the other packages for support offered by To-Increase. For more information, reach out to our experts.
Is EDI Studio the right fit for your company?
Depending on the scale of your messages and current business requirements, you would have to decide on a scenario. Your EDI solution would definitely be influenced by your trading partners and the ERP you use. So, if you use Microsoft Dynamics 365, EDI Studio would be a great fit for your organization. If not, we hope this helps you understand how much of an investment an EDI software solution would need.
If you have decided to go with a direct scenario with limited messaging with an in-house specialist, EDI Studio would work out cost-effective and be a great fit for you. And if you are looking at messages at a large scale, you would need to consider a VAN/broker partner and would need to factor in those costs along with the costs of an EDI Solution.
Either route you decide to take, if you are interested to learn more about the benefits, features, and limitations of EDI Studio, do read our honest review of the solution. And if you are ready to move to a no-code, embedded solution such as EDI Studio and Connectivity Studio for Microsoft D365 F&SCM, you can reach out to our experts using the link below.
Khalil Bouzidi
Kaustubh Durve
