As a gradual and logical evolutionary step, in mid-2005, TradeStone Software, Inc. (www.TradeStoneSoftware.com), a provider of collaborative e-sourcing solutions for Global 2000 companies, set its sights towards becoming the leader in enabling domestic and international sourcing through a "unified buying process." This is a bold strategic initiative to support a single cohesive view and business process for both international and domestic sourcing, for both buyers and sellers, across diverse systems, organizations, and geographies. The idea is that the process should not be separate for buying brands and private-labeled products. To that end, the vendor announced the commercial availability of its Unified Buying Engine, a technology platform that should enable user companies to streamline all purchasing into a single view and business process.
Part Three 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 A Well-designed Solution for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works.
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.
Owing to the technological foundation that enables supply chain visibility (via reporting and queries and alerting for exceptions), as well as critical path management, best practice modeling, workflow and collaboration, TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine is designed to work with an existing buying and sourcing infrastructure that may include legacy systems such as product data management (PDM), forecasting, order entry, warehousing, and finance. This design enables it to enhance existing systems reasonably quickly with expanded functionality, while converting disparate islands of information into truly collaborative nodes, resulting in a single, unified buying process.
As mentioned many times before, buyers and sellers in a typical supply chain must access multiple internal and external systems to view data, create transactions, and somehow collaborate to update constantly changing information. The unified buying process consolidates these multiple systems for both sides, masking the underlying complexities that cross multiple systems and geographies by enabling the same way of buying goods worldwide, regardless of sourcing location, language, currency, lead times, and so on.
Throughout the history of sourcing, companies (especially retailers) have naturally focused their efforts on domestic systems. However, approximately 70 percent of a store's merchandise is reportedly produced outside any retailer's home country, and the advent of a truly global marketplace creates the need for a sophisticated sourcing system that addresses the complexities of international sourcing. By implementing a unified buying process, retailers should be able to more effectively leverage the margins that are currently being left "on the table" when goods are not sourced internationally in a smart way. Since the process also welcomes smaller, disadvantaged players (thereby creating a level playing field for a truly global market), the end result should be the acceleration of business decisions, and access to a greater choice and diversity of products.
The Engine represents the underlying technology platform of the released and renamed TradeStone Suite (formerly the SteppingStones Suite), which is comprised of five modular applications, further complemented by the TradeStone Tools, which enhance an organization's ability to tailor the suite to best meet their business needs and reflect their business processes, rules, logic, exceptions, and exclusive nuances in the fully implemented solution. Tools include the TradeStone StepBuilder, the TradeStone CompositeBuilder, and the TradeStone QueryBuilder. As in its predecessor releases, embedded workflow processes foster collaboration among far-flung buyers and suppliers throughout the collaborative commerce community, while the modular design allows a more rapid deployment, as well as a system which is priced according to the size and scope of the implementation.
TradeStone Suite Modules
TradeStone Suite modules are sold independently, along with the Unified Buying Engine. They can be configured alone (if only to plug gaps in some missing global sourcing functionality) or as part of a broader solution, while the optional tools are sold separately. The modular applications are listed below:
TradeStone Product
Designed for all product planning, design, costing, and allocation needs, this module enables planning refinement, and tracks assortments, line lists, flows to stores, product traits, bill of material (BOM), images, specifications, product hierarchy, vendor compliance, merchandise calendar, merchandise charts, delivery channels, delivery flows, and so forth. It aims at providing users with the flexibility to design a product as a function of budgets, units, available materials, trims, capacity, and so on. Collaboration flexibility with multiple suppliers before an order is placed should enable them to take advantage of trends, new styles, cuts, colors, and the like. Users can even establish a collaboration history with the technical design group, merchandising, and the factory, and develop critical path product milestones for merchandise types. A product definition workflow handles BOMs, assortments, line lists, channels and specifications, whereas the product brief capability is a repository of preliminary concept information against plan. The initial product planning capability allows what-if modeling with dynamic costing, creation of product variations on the fly, creation of sell channels (pre-defined by color, size, delivery, and flow), and visibility into margins.
TradeStone Sourcing
Designed to read information from TradeStone tables and other product design-focused systems in the organization to create requests for quotes (RFQs), this module enables users to normalize information received in vendor offers, auto-calculate landed costs, and create planning calendars. It invites vendors to interact and collaborate on the design and delivery of products, while monitoring vendor performance relative to established tolerance and product expectations. The module also takes care of customs pre-classifications, separate packed items, set and nested items, European Article Number (EAN) item codes for stock-keeping units (SKUs), libraries of attachments, pre-packed items, bulk size or color ratios, product testing, and sample management. So as to quickly develop comprehensive RFQs for both domestic and international sourcing, the product pulls information directly from the product brief repository, and invites suppliers to review and provide quotations.
The comprehensive RFQ Builder walks merchants and buying professionals through workflows to build RFQs from the product brief repository, and attaches drawings, designs, and technical packages. Vendor collaboration is enabled to allow users to consider design suggestions from vendors, and answer any questions as they come in. The module then compares offers from multiple suppliers (which have all first been harmonized for language, currency, and lead times), to then select suppliers based on best attributes for product goals (for instance, margins, time-to-market, or precise quality specifications). One can also have an offer history and comparison report, where a user can view and compare all offers, again standardized with respect to currency, language, and lead time, and also taking into consideration the costs of freight, customs charges, and fees. The Estimated Landed Cost Engine automatically provides costing for freight, fees, and customs, and recalculates automatically when pricing changes.
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/web-based-solution-steps-out-for-cohesive-retailer-sourcing-18653/
Part Three 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 A Well-designed Solution for Sourcing: Its Technological Foundation and How It Works.
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.
Owing to the technological foundation that enables supply chain visibility (via reporting and queries and alerting for exceptions), as well as critical path management, best practice modeling, workflow and collaboration, TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine is designed to work with an existing buying and sourcing infrastructure that may include legacy systems such as product data management (PDM), forecasting, order entry, warehousing, and finance. This design enables it to enhance existing systems reasonably quickly with expanded functionality, while converting disparate islands of information into truly collaborative nodes, resulting in a single, unified buying process.
As mentioned many times before, buyers and sellers in a typical supply chain must access multiple internal and external systems to view data, create transactions, and somehow collaborate to update constantly changing information. The unified buying process consolidates these multiple systems for both sides, masking the underlying complexities that cross multiple systems and geographies by enabling the same way of buying goods worldwide, regardless of sourcing location, language, currency, lead times, and so on.
Throughout the history of sourcing, companies (especially retailers) have naturally focused their efforts on domestic systems. However, approximately 70 percent of a store's merchandise is reportedly produced outside any retailer's home country, and the advent of a truly global marketplace creates the need for a sophisticated sourcing system that addresses the complexities of international sourcing. By implementing a unified buying process, retailers should be able to more effectively leverage the margins that are currently being left "on the table" when goods are not sourced internationally in a smart way. Since the process also welcomes smaller, disadvantaged players (thereby creating a level playing field for a truly global market), the end result should be the acceleration of business decisions, and access to a greater choice and diversity of products.
The Engine represents the underlying technology platform of the released and renamed TradeStone Suite (formerly the SteppingStones Suite), which is comprised of five modular applications, further complemented by the TradeStone Tools, which enhance an organization's ability to tailor the suite to best meet their business needs and reflect their business processes, rules, logic, exceptions, and exclusive nuances in the fully implemented solution. Tools include the TradeStone StepBuilder, the TradeStone CompositeBuilder, and the TradeStone QueryBuilder. As in its predecessor releases, embedded workflow processes foster collaboration among far-flung buyers and suppliers throughout the collaborative commerce community, while the modular design allows a more rapid deployment, as well as a system which is priced according to the size and scope of the implementation.
TradeStone Suite Modules
TradeStone Suite modules are sold independently, along with the Unified Buying Engine. They can be configured alone (if only to plug gaps in some missing global sourcing functionality) or as part of a broader solution, while the optional tools are sold separately. The modular applications are listed below:
TradeStone Product
Designed for all product planning, design, costing, and allocation needs, this module enables planning refinement, and tracks assortments, line lists, flows to stores, product traits, bill of material (BOM), images, specifications, product hierarchy, vendor compliance, merchandise calendar, merchandise charts, delivery channels, delivery flows, and so forth. It aims at providing users with the flexibility to design a product as a function of budgets, units, available materials, trims, capacity, and so on. Collaboration flexibility with multiple suppliers before an order is placed should enable them to take advantage of trends, new styles, cuts, colors, and the like. Users can even establish a collaboration history with the technical design group, merchandising, and the factory, and develop critical path product milestones for merchandise types. A product definition workflow handles BOMs, assortments, line lists, channels and specifications, whereas the product brief capability is a repository of preliminary concept information against plan. The initial product planning capability allows what-if modeling with dynamic costing, creation of product variations on the fly, creation of sell channels (pre-defined by color, size, delivery, and flow), and visibility into margins.
TradeStone Sourcing
Designed to read information from TradeStone tables and other product design-focused systems in the organization to create requests for quotes (RFQs), this module enables users to normalize information received in vendor offers, auto-calculate landed costs, and create planning calendars. It invites vendors to interact and collaborate on the design and delivery of products, while monitoring vendor performance relative to established tolerance and product expectations. The module also takes care of customs pre-classifications, separate packed items, set and nested items, European Article Number (EAN) item codes for stock-keeping units (SKUs), libraries of attachments, pre-packed items, bulk size or color ratios, product testing, and sample management. So as to quickly develop comprehensive RFQs for both domestic and international sourcing, the product pulls information directly from the product brief repository, and invites suppliers to review and provide quotations.
The comprehensive RFQ Builder walks merchants and buying professionals through workflows to build RFQs from the product brief repository, and attaches drawings, designs, and technical packages. Vendor collaboration is enabled to allow users to consider design suggestions from vendors, and answer any questions as they come in. The module then compares offers from multiple suppliers (which have all first been harmonized for language, currency, and lead times), to then select suppliers based on best attributes for product goals (for instance, margins, time-to-market, or precise quality specifications). One can also have an offer history and comparison report, where a user can view and compare all offers, again standardized with respect to currency, language, and lead time, and also taking into consideration the costs of freight, customs charges, and fees. The Estimated Landed Cost Engine automatically provides costing for freight, fees, and customs, and recalculates automatically when pricing changes.
SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/web-based-solution-steps-out-for-cohesive-retailer-sourcing-18653/
0 comments:
Post a Comment