A distributor sits on both sides of every compliance conversation. Upstream, you need manufacturers and suppliers to send acknowledgments, ASNs and invoices your branches and accounts payable can use. Downstream, larger contractors, businesses and retailers want to send you orders by EDI, and some of them hold you to their own vendor compliance requirements when you ship.
Each side usually has its own testing process, its own spreadsheets and its own email threads. With hundreds of manufacturers and a growing number of EDI customers, certification becomes a queue nobody can see the end of.