B2B transactions are increasingly conducted online, via Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or other data exchange systems. However implementing EDI isn't always an easy task, as NetSuite customer GoPro recently discovered. GoPro, a manufacturer of cameras and other image capture systems, wanted to expand its distribution network by partnering with major "big box" retailers. However, the large retailers all required GoPro to support EDI for order management, inventory and payment processes.

GoPro had already managed to create some EDI connections manually, but hand coding took time and slowed down GoPro's ability to add partners.  Paying for a commercial EDI software license or EDI network subscription was a possible solution, butit was an expensive proposition for a company focused on sustainable growth.  

After evaluating a few EDI providers, GoPro selected NetSuite partner Dell Boomi for both EDI and application integration.  Dell Boomi's cloud-based integration platform, AtomSphere, includes a visual development environment and management dashboard as well as pre-built connectors for integrating NetSuite with other cloud-based or on-premise applications.  It's a one-stop shop for integrating multiple applications and automating critical business processes across those applications.

Dell Boomi and GoPro developed a B2B solution that integrates the NetSuite ERP and Ecommerce applications with VANs and 3PL applications to support the EDI requirements of the big box retailers GoPro works with. GoPro estimates that the Dell Boomi EDI system cost less than a third of a commercial EDI system and required far less time to develop and deploy -- under two weeks, compared with the two-plus months that most EDI implementations require. NetSuite's platform-agnostic technology also made integration easier.

The result has helped GoPro maintain a 300% annual growth rate -- something it couldn't have done without NetSuite and the Dell Boomi integration platform, says GoPro's CTO Stephen Baumer, noting, "Our team can very quickly map fields from NetSuite out to any of these trading partners’ various EDI applications. We can get the EDI mappings, data transformations and scheduling complete in under a week. It ends up being less than two weeks and one business systems analyst, compared to the handful of analysts and several months it would have taken with something else. "

- Raghu Gnanasekaran, Senior, Director Business Development at NetSuite