Transferring electronic data plays an important part in day-to-day business activities. Pricing information, contracts, sensitive POS or financial data, design drawings, production data, media information, orders and much more must all be transmitted in-house or to trading partners, service providers and customers in a way that is fully automated, punctual and protected against theft. Lobster_data EDI/EAI software is here to help.
Lobster also has a Managed File Transfer module (MFT) for business partners, branch offices or systems which communicate with one another and require a higher-level set of rules.

Lobster’s Managed File Transfer comprises the MFT server and MFT clients. The MFT server is located centrally, for instance in the computer centre of a cooperative or at the HQ of a group of companies. It handles all communication between the partners, such as the logging of data and processes, data mapping or data conversions, according to a pre-defined set of rules.
The MFT client can be installed on logistics partner systems, in the branch offices of trading companies or the subsidiaries of a group, for example, and is responsible for sending and receiving data to and from the MFT server. The client can also exchange data internally via FTP. Once installed, no prior IT knowledge is needed for local employees.
Lobster_data Managed File Transfer guarantees:
- a safe and secure end-to-end data flow
- simple handling by branches and partners without the need for IT expertise
- data transfer and data converting in a single system
- elimination of island solutions (such as batch files or shell scripts)
- central monitoring including alerting, controlling and restart function
Let’s take a closer look at how a group of transport and logistics companies used Managed File Transfer:
Previously, this group of companies had used virtual point-to-point connections to transfer data. With Lobster_data.mft this structure was replaced by a star-shaped structure with a central server capable of processing more than just data transfers. It was now possible to log specific data such as delivery note numbers or consignment numbers centrally as well as convert data from and to different formats.
Lobster_data.mft tranfers data in 4 phases:
- A partner sends data to the MFT server.
- The MFT server identifies the data type and the recipient(s) and splits the input data into separate elements for the different recipients.
- Dependent on type (sender/recipient), these data elements are converted to and from different formats (EDI, CSV, XML, …) according to a pre-defined set of rules. Certain fields are logged.
- The data is forwarded to the recipient(s).
Would you like to find out more about Managed File Transfer with Lobster_data?