idWorx! WAWF

The Wide Area Workflow is an essential communication tool for every business that supplies inventory to the DoD. Submission to WAWF replaces the manual DD250 document. It helps expedite payments and is now required by the DoD. Suppliers can submit their shipments to the WAWF through the WAWF website, a Value Added Network (VAN), or direct electronic submission. Each of the three methods has its own advantages and disadvantages. idWorx! supports direct submission, the most flexible of the submission processes.

WAWF Website

Submitting shipments through the WAWF website has the advantage of immediate adoption time. The supplier has no need to implement any software systems to generate the electronic documents and submit them. The WAWF website provides a relatively simple to use graphical interface. Users of the WAWF website, on the other hand must hand enter in an enormous amount of data pertaining to their shipments. Sometimes the website server is slow due to heavy traffic. This can lead to excessive wait times that make submission of shipments difficult. Entering large quantities of UID and especially RFID data into the website can become nearly unmanageable with almost assured user errors.

Value Added Network

A VAN can help to alleviate some of the issues experienced from the WAWF Website. VANs act as intermediaries for the submission of WAWF documents. A VAN will generally offer some validation of the shipment prior to submission to WAWF in exchange for what is usually a charge on each shipment sent out. Some VANs offer direct integration into existing software packages as well. VANs originate from decades ago and were primarily used for B2B (Business to Business) integration between industry entities. In addition to the financial toll of a VAN, the supplier must trust all of their company data to the VAN intermediary, which has its own perceived cost. The WAWF provides methods for submitting documents electronically for free, making a VAN service both costly and undesirable unless it the only choice for automated submission for a company.

Electronic Submission

Submitting shipment documents to the WAWF electronically is a quick and free alterative method to using the WAWF Website or a VAN service. It provides all of the benefits of using a VAN with none of the drawbacks. Despite all of the advantages, a company submitting directly to the WAWF has to provide their own data formatting for communication. Additionally, the supplier has to make sure that none of the myriad business rules are broken when communicating with the WAWF.

idWorx! utilizes direct electronic submission for communicating to the WAWF. Fortunately, idWorx! automatically encodes all of the shipment information, including UID and RFID data, into the EDI format required for electronic submission. Additionally, idWorx! double checks every business rule enforced by the WAWF and makes sure that they are correct before submittal. This means that submitting to WAWF via idWorx! is as easy as the press of a button.