2006 has been (and will continue to be) a year of sustained packaging in terms of the marketing message, and for product and service enhancements and delivery for TradeStone Software, Inc. (www.TradeStoneSoftware.com), a provider of collaborative e-sourcing solutions for Global 2000 companies.
Part Four of the series Collaborative Sourcing Solution Vendor Leaves No Stone Unturned.
For information on TradeStone's history, see Collaborative Sourcing Solution Vendor Leaves No Stone Unturned. Also see Well-designed Solution for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works, and Web-based Solution Steps Out for Cohesive Retailer Sourcing.
The five major functional modules detailed in Web-based Solution Steps Out for Cohesive Retailer Sourcing will eventually represent the three major logical areas:
1. retail product lifecycle management (PLM), via extension of the TradeStone Product module
2. global sourcing order management, via virtual merger of the TradeStone Sourcing and Order Management modules
3. supply chain logistics management, via virtual merger of the TradeStone Logistics and Finance modules
Having certainly fared better than its previous incarnation as RockPort, in its third year of existence TradeStone now employs about fifty employees at its headquarters and offices in Atlanta (US), Bangalore (India), and London (UK), and staff growth will continue for the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, things seem to be looking up, since IBM recently selected TradeStone as the global sourcing and order management linchpin for its retail supply chain solution at the La Gaude Centre for Supply Chain Excellence, alongside SAP, i2 Technologies, Galleria, and DemandTec. The roster of customers has grown to about a dozen, now including such names as The Limited, JC Penney, Federated Stores, The Home Depot, Pacific Alliance, Stride Rite, KarstadtQuelle, and Guitar Center. Although the vendor's current management team and professional services organization have over 250 years of combined retail experience to ensure customer success, the up-and-coming commerce communities are expected to spur more quality control functionality, and some customers have already been recognized for their successful deployments and results.
As for ongoing product enhancements, early in 2006 TradeStone announced the availability of TradeStone Suite v. 3.5 (currently in production at several customer sites), which introduced several planning capabilities that bind existing sourcing and order execution functionality, and which features significant enhancements to the Finance and Logistics modules, with the idea of continuing to foster rapid adoption and deployment across expanding supply chains. The new features in Version 3.5 support retailers, vendors, and manufacturers in building out their own exclusive TradeStone Commerce Communities, whose members should benefit from the suite's ability to connect planning, sourcing, and order execution, with access across multiple applications. This should provide a financial and merchandise view of sourced and ordered items across all production phases, as the system captures committed-to quantities, approved quantities, and on-order quantities, by selling channels, production status, and financial commitment.
TradeStone Commerce Communities better unite retailers with their suppliers (for instance, Deutsche Woolworth with 2,000 suppliers; American Eagle with 400 suppliers; and Pacific Alliance with 800 suppliers), agents, and inspections. They provide specialized services for suppliers, including inspection services, quality testing facilities, documentation services, financial services, and so on. They also provide supplier and vendor report cards for better supply base rationalization, as well as visibility into available capacity.
Global Trade Infrastructure Building Blocks
Going forward, the vendor will continue to round out its global trade infrastructure, which on a high level, will consist of the following building blocks:
* a Fulfillment Center, to provide supply chain execution, global order management, e-document generation, invoicing, financing, dynamic trace and track, global cost calculator, and data normalization;
* a Trade Tools Center, to provide StepBuilder business processes, composite views across multiple systems, and collaboration across multiple parties;
* an Information Center, with vast data on standard codes, currency information, trade risk reports, government information, centralized corporate libraries, and international documentation templates; and
* a Community Center, to provide services such as registration, partner profiling, e-links to banks, agents, government, virtual trade missions, online showrooms, and logistics and IP providers. ("IP" stands for "information pooler," a service that aggregates and disseminates data such as new freight rates. It can be a static data pool or dynamic—one can pull information from it, or the source can push information into the community).
The idea behind the creation of TradeStone Commerce Communities is to reduce the cost of doing business globally by facilitating the movement of ideas, information, goods, and money. As described earlier, the TradeStone Suite provides buyers, merchandisers, suppliers, vendors, and banks with a single view of financial information across the entire purchasing process—from the initiation of an order, right through to final payment. From the moment a purchase order is entered into the suite, the order details are stored centrally, and are then used to automatically pre-populate subsequent standard forms, such as advanced shipping notices (ASNs), bills of lading (BOLs), commercial and service invoices, and payment information.
The following upgrades available in the TradeStone Suite v.3.5 should further automate this process:
* Letter of Credit Processing: This feature will unite the buyer, supplier, and their financial institutions, as this virtual link will allow the supplier to collect new orders and present them electronically to the financial institution or financing partner in order to receive any necessary drafts or cash advances to pay for raw materials, new machinery, or any quality assurance tests necessary to begin work on the new orders.
* Packing List: In order to save time and eliminate redundant data entry, suppliers build customized packing lists from original purchase orders for each shipment. The packing list includes information on bar codes, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and containerization specifications, and also ensures suppliers are in compliance with buyers' documentation requirements. Accurate, timely, and standardized documents in turn mean faster clearance through customs.
* Logistics and Finance Documentation: All shipping and banking papers will be automatically pre-populated with order information drawn from original purchase orders, thereby saving valuable time by using data that is already available in the system. These documents and their detailed information regarding carriers, shippers, country of origin, export country, import country, and final destination, are essential for global trading security standards and for clearing customs without delay.
* Payment Builder: Once a buyer or merchant approves an invoice for payment, other TradeStone users in the finance department will be alerted, and use this feature to authorize payment, eliminating inter-office memos, cutting checks, and other manual procedures. The Payment Builder will be automatically updated with any pre-payments, change orders, and advanced shipments, so that there is never a question of what to pay, or when.
* Payment Summary: When a payment is made, a payment summary report is automatically generated, providing a view into each payment and the related invoices, and allowing the buyer to link back and forth between payment records and original invoices to a concise reconciliation of each transaction. This information is critical for chief financial officers (CFOs) looking for one report to show the reconciliation between the items that have been committed to, the items that have been manufactured towards the plan, and the items that have been paid for towards the season's plan.
Product Lifecycle Management for Retail
Early in 2006, TradeStone also announced that it had added PLM capabilities to the TradeStone Suite. The TradeStone PLM for Retail module (which is also in development testing now, with key customers) will address the specific needs of the apparel, footwear, and hard lines communities, by providing the collaboration tools necessary to automate and more easily manage the product development process, from initial concept through to delivery. It will also provide the tools to enable a retailer and its suppliers to collaboratively develop new products, better manage the quality testing process, meet milestone deadlines, and rate each party's responsiveness with scorecards. All this should enable products to speed up through the supply chain and reach the sales floor faster.
TradeStone's PLM module will address the fashion industry realities with a series of vendor collaboration tools designed to facilitate the more accurate communication of design iterations between the technical design group, merchandising, and the factory.
For an extensive discussion of global retail sourcing, see The Gain and Pain of Global Retail Sourcing, The Intricacies of Global Retail Sourcing, and The Fashion and Apparel Retailers' Conundrum.
The solution will thereby monitor the progress of a product, and assure quality throughout the process, starting with the design concept, the product brief, the technical package, the request for quote (RFQ), the order, and all phases of testing, right through to delivery. Such tools can speed up the product design phase, while making the manufacturing and testing phases up to 30 percent more efficient, which can shave significant length off the supply cycle time. The tools will include a number of components:
* Time and Action Calendars: Since quality assurance (QA) and control milestones are key to product design and production, keeping tabs on those benchmarks is critical to the entire process, and the product will accordingly enable alerting, thereby promoting real-time collaboration to resolve issues and keep product moving toward the store shelves. Pervasive time-and-action calendars for buyers and suppliers automatically assign production milestones (for everything from fabric samples, lab dips, and washability tests, to final product quality assurance testing), while master calendaring layers in additional work in progress (WIP) milestones for manufacturing (including bill of materials [BOM] receipts dates, piecing, assembly, and finish trims). The order status visibility function provides statuses on BOMs and WIPs, along with approval workflows across designers, merchants, and factories, which all can view and reconcile orders per any selling channel.
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-future-for-an-e-sourcing-solutions-builder-18654/
Part Four of the series Collaborative Sourcing Solution Vendor Leaves No Stone Unturned.
For information on TradeStone's history, see Collaborative Sourcing Solution Vendor Leaves No Stone Unturned. Also see Well-designed Solution for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works, and Web-based Solution Steps Out for Cohesive Retailer Sourcing.
The five major functional modules detailed in Web-based Solution Steps Out for Cohesive Retailer Sourcing will eventually represent the three major logical areas:
1. retail product lifecycle management (PLM), via extension of the TradeStone Product module
2. global sourcing order management, via virtual merger of the TradeStone Sourcing and Order Management modules
3. supply chain logistics management, via virtual merger of the TradeStone Logistics and Finance modules
Having certainly fared better than its previous incarnation as RockPort, in its third year of existence TradeStone now employs about fifty employees at its headquarters and offices in Atlanta (US), Bangalore (India), and London (UK), and staff growth will continue for the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, things seem to be looking up, since IBM recently selected TradeStone as the global sourcing and order management linchpin for its retail supply chain solution at the La Gaude Centre for Supply Chain Excellence, alongside SAP, i2 Technologies, Galleria, and DemandTec. The roster of customers has grown to about a dozen, now including such names as The Limited, JC Penney, Federated Stores, The Home Depot, Pacific Alliance, Stride Rite, KarstadtQuelle, and Guitar Center. Although the vendor's current management team and professional services organization have over 250 years of combined retail experience to ensure customer success, the up-and-coming commerce communities are expected to spur more quality control functionality, and some customers have already been recognized for their successful deployments and results.
As for ongoing product enhancements, early in 2006 TradeStone announced the availability of TradeStone Suite v. 3.5 (currently in production at several customer sites), which introduced several planning capabilities that bind existing sourcing and order execution functionality, and which features significant enhancements to the Finance and Logistics modules, with the idea of continuing to foster rapid adoption and deployment across expanding supply chains. The new features in Version 3.5 support retailers, vendors, and manufacturers in building out their own exclusive TradeStone Commerce Communities, whose members should benefit from the suite's ability to connect planning, sourcing, and order execution, with access across multiple applications. This should provide a financial and merchandise view of sourced and ordered items across all production phases, as the system captures committed-to quantities, approved quantities, and on-order quantities, by selling channels, production status, and financial commitment.
TradeStone Commerce Communities better unite retailers with their suppliers (for instance, Deutsche Woolworth with 2,000 suppliers; American Eagle with 400 suppliers; and Pacific Alliance with 800 suppliers), agents, and inspections. They provide specialized services for suppliers, including inspection services, quality testing facilities, documentation services, financial services, and so on. They also provide supplier and vendor report cards for better supply base rationalization, as well as visibility into available capacity.
Global Trade Infrastructure Building Blocks
Going forward, the vendor will continue to round out its global trade infrastructure, which on a high level, will consist of the following building blocks:
* a Fulfillment Center, to provide supply chain execution, global order management, e-document generation, invoicing, financing, dynamic trace and track, global cost calculator, and data normalization;
* a Trade Tools Center, to provide StepBuilder business processes, composite views across multiple systems, and collaboration across multiple parties;
* an Information Center, with vast data on standard codes, currency information, trade risk reports, government information, centralized corporate libraries, and international documentation templates; and
* a Community Center, to provide services such as registration, partner profiling, e-links to banks, agents, government, virtual trade missions, online showrooms, and logistics and IP providers. ("IP" stands for "information pooler," a service that aggregates and disseminates data such as new freight rates. It can be a static data pool or dynamic—one can pull information from it, or the source can push information into the community).
The idea behind the creation of TradeStone Commerce Communities is to reduce the cost of doing business globally by facilitating the movement of ideas, information, goods, and money. As described earlier, the TradeStone Suite provides buyers, merchandisers, suppliers, vendors, and banks with a single view of financial information across the entire purchasing process—from the initiation of an order, right through to final payment. From the moment a purchase order is entered into the suite, the order details are stored centrally, and are then used to automatically pre-populate subsequent standard forms, such as advanced shipping notices (ASNs), bills of lading (BOLs), commercial and service invoices, and payment information.
The following upgrades available in the TradeStone Suite v.3.5 should further automate this process:
* Letter of Credit Processing: This feature will unite the buyer, supplier, and their financial institutions, as this virtual link will allow the supplier to collect new orders and present them electronically to the financial institution or financing partner in order to receive any necessary drafts or cash advances to pay for raw materials, new machinery, or any quality assurance tests necessary to begin work on the new orders.
* Packing List: In order to save time and eliminate redundant data entry, suppliers build customized packing lists from original purchase orders for each shipment. The packing list includes information on bar codes, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and containerization specifications, and also ensures suppliers are in compliance with buyers' documentation requirements. Accurate, timely, and standardized documents in turn mean faster clearance through customs.
* Logistics and Finance Documentation: All shipping and banking papers will be automatically pre-populated with order information drawn from original purchase orders, thereby saving valuable time by using data that is already available in the system. These documents and their detailed information regarding carriers, shippers, country of origin, export country, import country, and final destination, are essential for global trading security standards and for clearing customs without delay.
* Payment Builder: Once a buyer or merchant approves an invoice for payment, other TradeStone users in the finance department will be alerted, and use this feature to authorize payment, eliminating inter-office memos, cutting checks, and other manual procedures. The Payment Builder will be automatically updated with any pre-payments, change orders, and advanced shipments, so that there is never a question of what to pay, or when.
* Payment Summary: When a payment is made, a payment summary report is automatically generated, providing a view into each payment and the related invoices, and allowing the buyer to link back and forth between payment records and original invoices to a concise reconciliation of each transaction. This information is critical for chief financial officers (CFOs) looking for one report to show the reconciliation between the items that have been committed to, the items that have been manufactured towards the plan, and the items that have been paid for towards the season's plan.
Product Lifecycle Management for Retail
Early in 2006, TradeStone also announced that it had added PLM capabilities to the TradeStone Suite. The TradeStone PLM for Retail module (which is also in development testing now, with key customers) will address the specific needs of the apparel, footwear, and hard lines communities, by providing the collaboration tools necessary to automate and more easily manage the product development process, from initial concept through to delivery. It will also provide the tools to enable a retailer and its suppliers to collaboratively develop new products, better manage the quality testing process, meet milestone deadlines, and rate each party's responsiveness with scorecards. All this should enable products to speed up through the supply chain and reach the sales floor faster.
TradeStone's PLM module will address the fashion industry realities with a series of vendor collaboration tools designed to facilitate the more accurate communication of design iterations between the technical design group, merchandising, and the factory.
For an extensive discussion of global retail sourcing, see The Gain and Pain of Global Retail Sourcing, The Intricacies of Global Retail Sourcing, and The Fashion and Apparel Retailers' Conundrum.
The solution will thereby monitor the progress of a product, and assure quality throughout the process, starting with the design concept, the product brief, the technical package, the request for quote (RFQ), the order, and all phases of testing, right through to delivery. Such tools can speed up the product design phase, while making the manufacturing and testing phases up to 30 percent more efficient, which can shave significant length off the supply cycle time. The tools will include a number of components:
* Time and Action Calendars: Since quality assurance (QA) and control milestones are key to product design and production, keeping tabs on those benchmarks is critical to the entire process, and the product will accordingly enable alerting, thereby promoting real-time collaboration to resolve issues and keep product moving toward the store shelves. Pervasive time-and-action calendars for buyers and suppliers automatically assign production milestones (for everything from fabric samples, lab dips, and washability tests, to final product quality assurance testing), while master calendaring layers in additional work in progress (WIP) milestones for manufacturing (including bill of materials [BOM] receipts dates, piecing, assembly, and finish trims). The order status visibility function provides statuses on BOMs and WIPs, along with approval workflows across designers, merchants, and factories, which all can view and reconcile orders per any selling channel.
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-future-for-an-e-sourcing-solutions-builder-18654/
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