Electronic Documents Interchange: Review of the Russian Food Retail Companies

Document flow is the main part of the supported activities of each business. In the past years, the electronical and digital changes influenced the behaviour and habits of the market subjects, particularly business subjects. Food retail companies traditionally have great volume of documents and thereupon the EDI (electronic document interchange) is an initial way for retailers to improve the efficiency of their business. The actuality of the topic chosen is confirming with the fact that growing document-flow in middle and large retail companies forces the transfer to the EDI and to the automatization of posting process. The aim of this work is to characterize the level of electronic document interchange (EDI) in the Russian food retail companies, common advantages and disadvantages, difficulties and their solutions in this area. Methodological basis for this method consists in the summarizing of retail companies EDI best practices and interview of middle and large Russian retailers. The result shows the high level of the EDI expansion among the food retailers and their involvement in the adoption process of automatically processing of electronic invoices.