Why Truugo?

Electronic data interchange (EDI) speeds up business processes, but data quality issues and inefficient deployment processes may cause surprisingly high costs. Truugo helps organizations minimize these issues by providing a platform for detailed message validation.

Errors have much more severe consequences in electronic data interchange than traditional paper/fax-based data interchange. Thus electronic data must be error-free to gain full benefits from automated processes. High-quality data is reached only via detailed and systematic testing.

The constant need for message validation

Detailed validation is needed everywhere and all the time.

• Validation is required to ensure that messages conform to the receiver's requirements in deployments (supplier/customer onboarding).
• When system updates are being made, one must check that generated files are still valid.
• Fast and accurate error detection and reporting are vital for the production environment to minimize risks.
• The help desk must react to several data quality issues on a daily basis.

Problems in the traditional test process

Traditionally validation requires resources from both parties when validation and reporting are performed bilaterally based on a common schedule. A delay between a test and feedback might stretch into days when a total time might sum up to weeks in challenging deployments requiring many iterations. Iterative and manual tasks consume a lot of resources. Thereby quite a high volume is required to justify a new EDI connection. A bilateral and partly manual testing process is also a significant challenge for test reporting, especially when there is more than one person responsible for the reporting. The same error might be reported in various ways depending on the day and the person on duty.

General XML editors (XML Spy, Stylus Studio, oXygen) help to identify structural errors by providing schema validation based on W3C XML schema. Using an XML validator is a good start, but schema validation doesn't cover content validation. In addition, schema validation generates very technical (even cryptic) error descriptions, requiring special knowledge for interpretation.

Even though an XML document is well-formed and valid against a message schema (DTD or W3C XML Schema), it doesn't imply that content is valid. The wider the message scope, the less significant the schema validation. In other words, a message which passes schema validation might lack all data required by a message receiver. This is usually the case when a message is based on an international message format that covers various use cases.

General test tools are poor at locating errors concerning message content and data relationships. These errors are challenging to find manually, even for a professional. It's also a waste of resources and a significant risk to overload the most valuable resources with an uninspiring task.

Solution

Truugo is a 24/7 message validation platform for detailed message validation. Each user can test at their own pace, and the system provides instant feedback on errors. In addition, a formalized procedure harmonizes test reporting and makes it possible to automate the task.

Benefits

Tests performed as a self-service adds flexibility and diminishes unnecessary bilateral interaction. A calendar time spent on testing will decrease drastically, especially in challenging iterative cases where an instant feedback mechanism enables validation and error correction at once. In addition, data quality will improve when infrequent errors are located by running more tests without additional costs.

See an overview of Truugo benefits.

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