Orderful, a company that helps trading partners exchange order EDI data, has raised $35 million in new funding. The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, with support from NewRoad Capital.
When a store buys products from a supplier, or hires a shipping company to move those products, the two sides don’t just call each other or send emails. They exchange standardized digital documents that spell out order details, shipping information, and payment terms. This system is called EDI, short for electronic data interchange, and it’s been the behind-the-scenes plumbing of retail and shipping for more than 40 years.
The catch is that every big retailer wants those documents formatted its own way. That means when a supplier signs on with a new retail partner, someone has to build a custom setup just for that relationship. Historically, that could be months per a trading partner, and getting it wrong could mean fines.
Orderful’s answer is a product called Mosaic. Instead of a person manually building that connection, Mosaic uses artificial intelligence to read a retailer’s requirements and build the setup on its own. The company says work that used to take months can now be done in days. Mosaic also watches for when a retailer changes its rules and updates a supplier’s documents automatically, so businesses don’t get hit with penalties for outdated formatting.
Traditionally, legacy EDI providers take on this work through additional service contracts, giving them no incentive to build technology that removes the additive work. Orderful believes modern technology can erase the need for those additional service line items, impacting overall EDI costs models.
Orderful founder and CEO Erik Kiser says the goal was to fix a system that’s been due for an overhaul for decades. “EDI has been broken for 40+ years,” Kiser said. “Not because the problem was unsolvable, but because no one was willing to rebuild it from the ground up. With Mosaic, we did.”
The company also offers two other tools. Pixel lets smaller suppliers manage all of their retail partnerships from one simple web screen, instead of logging into a different portal for every retailer. And a third tool helps suppliers print shipping labels that automatically follow each retailer’s specific rules, another common source of fines when done by hand.
Andreessen Horowitz general partner Brian Roberts, who sits on Orderful’s board, pointed to his own background in the industry. “During my years at Walmart, I saw how critical reliable, scalable EDI infrastructure is to the supply chain,” Roberts said, “and Mosaic represents exactly the type of innovation the industry has been missing.”
So far, Orderful says it has handled more than 6 billion of these EDI transactions and connects with over 10,000 trading partners. The company plans to put the new funding toward building more features, including tools that would let retailers keep a closer eye on their supply chains and handle more of the paperwork on their own.
The takeaway is simple: a lot of what shows up on store shelves depends on paperwork moving correctly between companies behind the scenes. Orderful is betting that AI can make that paperwork move faster, cheaper, and with fewer costly mistakes.
Learn more at www.orderful.com
Author Bio:
Grace is a logistics and transportation expert with a background in journalism, digital content, and leadership across the 3PL space. As Senior Manager of Communications and PR at Orderful, she specializes in negotiation, storytelling, and strategic communication. She previously led a startup brokerage to $80M+ in revenue and held media roles at FreightWaves and SiriusXM, sharpening her broadcasting and content creation skills. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
Connect at https://www.orderful.com/
