What Does Accredited Standards Committee X12 Mean?
Chartered by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1979, the Accredited Standards Committee X12 is a US standards body that is responsible for defining, developing, maintaining and publishing the X12 electronic data interchange (EDI) standards, which help in driving business processes nationally and globally. This committee is the globally favored standards body for setting the requirements of electronic business document content and also influences international forums by providing contents for message design architecture as well as universal core component works. It also initiates reduction in costs and expands organizational reaches along with enhancing business processes.
Techopedia Explains Accredited Standards Committee X12
The Accredited Standards Committee X12 provides standards that can be used for nearly all facets of business-to-business operations conducted electronically. The committee aims at:
- Developing high-quality e-commerce standards that are responsive to the needs of the standards user
- Collaborating with other existing standards to make the standards developed more interoperable
- Avoiding any conflict, confusion and duplication of effort
- Publishing and promoting the standards along with their education
- Driving the implementation and adoption of the standards developed by the committee
The committee also looks into evolving the electronic data standards while introducing new technological changes to ensure an organized, systematic transition for the existing user base.
The committee body meets three times a year to define and modify the standards, and the members jointly develop and publish the EDI standards by means of uniform and common business languages, which help in streamlining business transactions. The membership of Accredited Standards Committee X12 consists of business process experts and technologists from government and different industries such as transportation, finance, health care, insurance, manufacturing and supply chain.