Editing Electronic data interchange (section)

=== Costs, trade-offs and implementation ===
It is important to note that there are key trade-offs between VANs and Direct EDI,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rssbus.com/resources/edi/|title=EDI: The Complete Guide and Resource Center|access-date=2018-12-04|archive-date=2018-12-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181205060658/https://www.rssbus.com/resources/edi/|url-status=live}}</ref> and in many instances, organizations exchanging EDI documents can in fact use both in concert, for different aspects of their EDI implementations. For example, in the U.S., the majority of EDI document exchanges use AS2, so a direct EDI setup for AS2 may make sense for a U.S.-based organization. But adding OFTP2 capabilities to communicate with a European partner may be difficult, so a VAN might make sense to handle those specific transactions, while direct EDI is used for the AS2 transactions.

In many ways, a VAN acts as a service provider, simplifying much of the setup for organizations looking to initiate EDI. Due to the fact that many organizations first starting out with EDI often do so to meet a customer or partner requirement and therefore lack in-house EDI expertise, a VAN can be a valuable asset.

However, VANs may come with high costs. VANs typically charge a per-document or even per-line-item transaction fee to process EDI transactions as a service on behalf of their customers. This is the predominant reason why many organizations also implement an EDI software solution or eventually migrate to one for some or all of their EDI.

On the other hand, implementing EDI software can be a challenging process, depending on the complexity of the use case, technologies involved and availability of EDI expertise. In addition, there are ongoing maintenance requirements and updates to consider. For example, EDI mapping is one of the most challenging EDI management tasks. Companies must develop and maintain EDI maps for each of their trading partners (and sometimes multiple EDI maps for each trading partner based on their order fulfilment requirements).