"Are we still entering the orders that come in from our website, from marketplaces and from our large customers' systems into the ERP by hand?" As the number of sales channels grows, this question reaches the agendas of operations and finance teams more and more often. The data for Türkiye also shows that channels are multiplying. According to the Information Technology Usage in Enterprises Survey that TÜİK (the Turkish Statistical Institute) published on September 10, 2026, the share of enterprises selling via the internet or electronic data interchange (EDI) was 13.6% in 2024 and rose to 17.1% in 2025.
Every order that arrives through an electronic channel brings with it a stock record, a shipping document and an invoice. In this article we look at what the data says, at how EDI differs from web sales, and at how to automate the chain from order to dispatch note to invoice, step by step.
The picture in Türkiye: e-sales rise with company size
According to TÜİK data, the share of enterprises making e-sales rises as scale grows: 16.4% among enterprises with 10-49 employees, 18.3% among those with 50-249 employees, and 29.7% among those with 250 or more employees.
By activity, the highest rate is seen in accommodation and food services, at 43.3%. This is followed by publishing, radio-TV and content activities at 25.4% and by wholesale and retail trade at 23.7%. Because order volumes and line-item counts in wholesale and retail trade are generally high, the burden of manual data entry is also felt more acutely in these sectors.
TÜİK defines this indicator as the sale of goods or services made through a website or mobile apps, or through electronic data interchange. In other words, two different channels sit within the same rate, and from an automation standpoint the two create different needs.
The difference between web sales and EDI
Eurostat defines EDI as the structured transmission of data or documents between organizations; the term also covers the family of standards and messages suited to automated processing. In practice the difference is this: in web sales, the order arrives through a form, a shopping cart or a marketplace panel; in EDI, the customer's system sends the order directly to the seller's system as a message that a machine can read.
The European data shows that the weight of these two channels differs. According to Eurostat data compiled in February 2026, 17.99% of enterprises in the EU made e-sales only through websites or apps in 2024; 2.9% used only EDI, and 2.7% used both together. In turnover, however, the picture reverses: EU enterprises earned 19.49% of their total turnover from e-sales; of this, 8.39% came from web and app orders and 11.07% from EDI messages.
The scale effect is also pronounced in Europe. Among large enterprises, 48.48% made e-sales, and these sales made up 24.24% of their total turnover; the 14.25% portion of this share was EDI-based. Eurostat explains this by large enterprises relying more heavily on technologies and standards that integrate EDI sales into business processes. The e-sales rate is 31.67% among medium-sized enterprises and 21.38% among small ones.
The two datasets cover different countries, and TÜİK's bulletin does not separate web from EDI, so a one-to-one comparison would not be right. The lesson that can be drawn is this: EDI can be a channel that few companies use but that carries a significant part of turnover. For a supplier working with large buyers, an EDI request can become less a technology preference than a condition of the customer relationship.
The Türkiye-specific link in the chain: the e-document
The documents issued against an order are, to a large extent, electronic in Türkiye. According to the e-Belge (e-Document) website of the Gelir İdaresi Başkanlığı (GİB, the Turkish Revenue Administration), e-İrsaliye (electronic dispatch note) covers the issuing, transmission, storage and presentation of the paper dispatch note in electronic form; VUK (Tax Procedure Law) General Communiqué Serial No. 509 has imposed a transition requirement on certain sectors and taxpayer groups. For the scope and the dates, GİB's current transition calendar should be consulted.
This means that order automation does not end on the sales side alone. When order data enters the ERP in an accurate and structured form, the dispatch note and the invoice can be generated from the same data. We covered how e-Fatura (Türkiye's e-Invoice system) data can be used in reconciliation in our e-transformation article, and how GİB package updates affect integrations in our article on e-Belge updates.
A practical path: connecting the order, dispatch note and invoice chain
The steps below are a general framework derived from the findings in the sources; each organization needs to adapt it to its own channel structure, ERP and customer requirements.
- Build a channel inventory. List which channels your orders come from (website, marketplace, EDI, email, phone) and each channel's monthly order and line-item counts. Automation priority starts with volume.
- Mark the manual touchpoints. Observe how many times an order is copied by hand between entering the ERP and the invoice, where it is retyped, and at which step the most errors occur.
- Clean up your master data. If the matching of customer codes, product codes, units and sales terms is inconsistent, no automation will work reliably. In EDI, a separate mapping table between the counterparty's product codes and your own must also be set up.
- Choose the right method for each channel. For structured sources such as EDI and marketplace interfaces, direct integration is generally more durable. For portals without an interface, or for orders that arrive as email attachments, software robots (RPA) and document-reading tools can be an interim solution. We examined which processes use AI-powered RPA in our article on the European data.
- Design an exception queue. In cases such as an out-of-stock product, an amount mismatch or a missing address, the order should leave the automated flow and land with a person for approval. If the reasons for exceptions are reported regularly, master data problems become visible too.
- Generate the dispatch note and the invoice from the same data. When the shipment record and the e-documents are derived from the order data, inconsistencies between order, shipment and invoice decrease and reconciliation becomes easier.
- Measure. Processing time per order, the manual-intervention rate, the number of erroneous or returned invoices, and the time from order to invoice show whether the automation is really working.
- Tie change to a process. Marketplace interfaces, customer EDI requirements and GİB technical guides change. If no one is assigned to monitor and test these changes, the automation can break silently.
Conclusion
In Türkiye, the share of companies making e-sales rose from 13.6% to 17.1% in a year; among companies with 250 or more employees, the rate is 29.7%. The European data shows that EDI carries a larger part of turnover even though fewer companies use it. As channels multiply, the cost of carrying orders by hand comes back as errors, delays and a reconciliation burden.
For a healthy start, choosing the highest-volume channel and the most frequently hand-touched step, fixing the master data and measuring the result can deliver faster and more reliable results than a comprehensive transformation plan.
Why logistics experience matters in order automation. An electronic order is only the first link in a chain that ends when the right goods, in the right units, leave the warehouse with a dispatch note and an invoice that match the order. That is why steps 3, 5 and 6 above (master data, the exception queue, and generating the dispatch note and invoice from the same data) are best designed with the operation behind the screen in view: stock-outs, unit mismatches and missing delivery details tend to surface first at picking, packing and dispatch. One of Orient Global's consultants brings more than 30 years in operations, logistics and supply chain: at a technology distribution company of roughly one billion dollars in scale, he ran logistics, warehousing, technical service and administrative operations end to end, building and leading teams of 100+ people and delivering lasting gains in operational performance through KPI-driven programs. He has also managed nationwide warehouse and transport operations across leading retail, logistics and distribution organizations. An industrial engineer, he now brings that supply-chain discipline to SMEs through AI and automation. Meet our consultants.
This article is for general information purposes only and does not replace legal advice.
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