When I take my car in for an oil change, it always seems like I walk away with an annoyingly long list of maintenance repairs. But sometimes it’s good to take a scrutinizing look at my car’s systems. Driving on screechy brakes, after all, is bad—not to mention, dangerous.

Because Babelway has nearly a decade of experience in machine-to-machine connectivity in addition to being a pioneer in cloud-based integration, we’ve seen it all. Over time, we’ve identified five features that really make the engine of B2B integration hum.

Before we take a look under the hood of your EDI system, here’s what we’ll be evaluating:

1. Flexibility

Traditional EDI with third-party and installed options can limit who you can connect with, the systems you can integrate with, and the type of data you can exchange. Today’s evolving business integration landscape requires flexibility to handle a variety of formats and transfer methods.

2. Adaptability

Meeting the integration requirements of your business partners can be difficult. Most businesses rely on flexible integration tools to enable connectivity using a range of existing and widely used formats and technologies. And still, your business’ growth potential could be limited if your existing solution isn’t nimble enough to react quickly to market demands. Adaptability is your EDI service provider’s ability to accommodate emerging technologies and standards—or even those yet to be created.

3. Error Resolution

Most EDI providers have a “No Man’s Land” where exchanged documents are hard to view and manipulate. When something goes wrong with your data, it generally takes longer to address those issues with a third-party intermediary. This delay can really impact business.

4. Efficient Onboarding

Your technology shouldn’t limit the speed of business. With the right integration platform, you will have the tools to deal directly with a new partner and onboard quickly. By reducing your processing time, you can cut costs and improve business relationships. It’s the classic win-win.

5. Ease of Use

EDI is so complicated (they say) that you need a dedicated team of experts or a company to manage it for you in order to be successful. Truth is, EDI was complicated, but that’s starting to change. With improving technology, EDI can be managed in-house without being completely dependent on or overusing valuable IT resources.