All organisations exchange information in their business process, both externally and internally.
Although it is assumed that the information exchange occurs between the right parties, in many instances a precise means of identifying the parties and locations has become an absolute necessity. Moreover, the use of coded identification instead of alphanumeric names and addresses has become key to the successful implementation of EDI projects. Each location is allocated a unique identification number. GLNs are governed by strict rules to guarantee that each one is unique world-wide. The exchange of standard message formats from one computer application to another is known as Electronic Data Interchange or EDI .