TradeStone Software, Inc. (www.TradeStoneSoftware.com) has displayed consummate perseverance in becoming a provider of collaborative e-sourcing solutions for Global 2000 companies. The vendor offers what is possibly the first composite application to the retail global sourcing market that leverages an organization's information technology (IT) infrastructure. This application operates either on a stand-alone basis, or as a layer into an application mix to cover any global sourcing functional gaps. Built on modern technology and conveniently accessed through simply a web browser, TradeStone's offering, initially named SteppingStones (and recently renamed TradeStone Suite), supports most of the key functional areas of international buying and selling, such as the request for quote (RFQ) pre-buy process, ongoing order management, sourcing logistics, track-and-trace visibility, government-related compliance processes, and payment processing. It also provides underlying event management and alerting. It works across currencies, languages, and countries, without necessarily invoking the need to train users, even if they have lower levels of computer literacy.
Part Two 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.
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.
In order to foster rapid widespread adoption with an intuitive "zero training" environment, and also to leverage and enhance current IT investments, all with rapid phased deployments that would ideally deliver return on investment (ROI) in 90 to 120 days, the TradeStone Suite architecture had to espouse several design principles. For one, it features global access by leveraging web browsers and the Internet using hypertext markup language (HTML). The application can be easily accessed not only by users within the client enterprise, but also by users (such as trading partners) via extranet. Furthermore, the application is accessible to other programs through the power and flexibility of integration via Web services (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, BPEL, and More). This brings us to the ability to leverage existing applications (with data views and extraction from several disparate source systems) such as order management systems, warehouse management systems (WMS), item master, vendor master, and so on; and the ability to aggregate them on a single screen, thus minimizing traditional "hard-coded" integration costs.
The product was also designed for collaboration from the ground up, to leverage e-mail alerting and workflows, so as to reducce dependency on pesky and tardy phone and fax communications. With a built-in security infrastructure, the application manages and tracks the users' workflows, whereby the screens are not meant simply for data entry, but rather have a built-in logic. The product suite is configurable via available system tools and rules-driven logic, and is also expandable, with the ability to add new functionality—not just by customizing, but by downloading from the hosted site, thus minimizing upgrade and implementation costs.
The TradeStone Suite is also a scalable, multi-tiered, server-based enterprise application built on the standards-based Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development model, with support for Web services and extensible markup language (XML) leveraged for integrations (see Understand J2EE and .NET Environments Before You Choose).
On the database tier, the product supports IBM DB2 and Oracle, and IBM WebSphere as the application server. The Web server (which can be Microsoft Internet Information Server [IIS] or Apache Tomcat) has bidirectional communication with the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser via the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)/secure socket layer (SSL) combination. The application security consists of user authentication, network security (via firewalls and SSL), and the application security per se, which is role-based and also data-based (to provide transaction- and field-level security).
The Apache Tomcat open source web servlet container complements TradeStone's own model-based "data anywhere" architecture spanning multiple systems, thus leveraging an organization's current IT investment. It also aims at driving down IT costs by eliminating the need for redundant databases, replication and continual reimplementation, and retraining of employees and trading partners. With this architecture, the TradeStone Suite accesses data from multiple applications without copying or replicating the data, and ultimately eliminates the need for modifying existing applications. The "data anywhere" architecture can accept data from a variety of data sources and formats, and allows an application to provide a unified view of a transaction even if its constituent data is located in several different databases.
Rather than a traditional costly database-to-database integration approach, TradeStone's integration approach consists of a user interface (UI) engine, a model-based application logic independent of the database, and a dynamic data mapping integration engine. XML is used for data mapping and process definitions to Web services, legacy systems, and databases, or to any other third-party system. Data channels to data sources like databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, legacy applications, and so on, can go via Java database connectivity (JDBC), Web services, and messaging.
In other words, by leveraging the integration capabilities of standards-based Web services technologies, TradeStone has been able to put together an application that can be relatively quickly configured to shift data in and out of traditional enterprise planning systems. This should allow buying organizations to more easily intertwine the basic procurement information these systems typically store, with crucial sourcing data such as specifications, schedules, and statuses.
Also, to tackle the aforementioned global sourcing issues, the product can be sliced into several logical layers that cater to data and content management, embedded intelligence, dynamic processing, and industry engines (such as costing, planning, order batch sizing, and event management). For now, it suffices to say that the functional layer caters to the overall product design-to-delivery process (with underlying critical path and event management capabilities), logically grouped into five major modules: Design & Planning, Sourcing, Order, Logistics, and Finance, which will all be detailed later in this series. The collaborative layer is to help establish the nature of a collaborative process, as well as the roles and responsibilities to leverage trading partners' assets for mutual benefit. This is provided via shared data, alerts, automated emails, shared business processes, authorizations, and approvals, and is independent of the underlying data source, which should result in fewer delays in the critical steps in the supply chain.
Given that functionality alone is not sufficient if it is not guided by the business process context, the process layer is where the data is interpreted, both in terms of the functionality it calls upon, and the process it fits within (for example, the role of shipment details). The layer provides the tools that allow the application to be configured to support well-oiled business processes, rather than to be shoehorned (see Business Process Management: A Crash Course on What It Entails and Why to Use It). Closely related to this is the intelligence layer, where the system inherently understands how to process tasks, and where the complexities of international and domestic trade are masked from the user to let them focus on their particular job. The intelligence layer provides content as well as functionality, such as harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) data.
To bolster these two layers, in mid-2004 TradeStone Software and ILOG announced that ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, would enhance TradeStone's flagship product. The combination of TradeStone's global sourcing software and ILOG JRules has been enabling manufacturers, retailers, and other businesses involved in global trade to configure, maintain, and change their business processes with increased agility in response to business growth and other dynamic business demands.
Electronic sourcing refers to the ability to bring together different trading partners over the Web into a supply chain network that responds to changing market demands. ILOG JRules, which allows the business logic embedded in business applications to be represented as rules that can be managed by business analysts, supply chain planners, and other business users, enables businesses to automate business policies, procedures, and best practices, improving resource management and accelerating investment in business process management (BPM). As a key component of the TradeStone Suite, ILOG JRules has enhanced supply chain usability for IT and business users, helping to ensure that the suite is scalable to the needs of TradeStone's customers. Compliance solutions powered by ILOG JRules monitor high volumes of data in real time, enabling the immediate detection and reporting of faulty or fraudulent information. By embedding this industry-recognized business rules engine, TradeStone believes that the suite is deployed more rapidly, while the best practices are available too.
Last but not least, the underlying tools layer supports all of the layers of the application to reasonably rapidly bring together, configure, implement, and maintain a solution. It consists of features like the Query Builder, Model Builder, Composite Screen Builder, Step Builder, Business Rules Builder, Collaboration Tools, Integration Mapper, Application Configuration, and so on.
Part Two 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.
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.
In order to foster rapid widespread adoption with an intuitive "zero training" environment, and also to leverage and enhance current IT investments, all with rapid phased deployments that would ideally deliver return on investment (ROI) in 90 to 120 days, the TradeStone Suite architecture had to espouse several design principles. For one, it features global access by leveraging web browsers and the Internet using hypertext markup language (HTML). The application can be easily accessed not only by users within the client enterprise, but also by users (such as trading partners) via extranet. Furthermore, the application is accessible to other programs through the power and flexibility of integration via Web services (see Understanding SOA, Web Services, BPM, BPEL, and More). This brings us to the ability to leverage existing applications (with data views and extraction from several disparate source systems) such as order management systems, warehouse management systems (WMS), item master, vendor master, and so on; and the ability to aggregate them on a single screen, thus minimizing traditional "hard-coded" integration costs.
The product was also designed for collaboration from the ground up, to leverage e-mail alerting and workflows, so as to reducce dependency on pesky and tardy phone and fax communications. With a built-in security infrastructure, the application manages and tracks the users' workflows, whereby the screens are not meant simply for data entry, but rather have a built-in logic. The product suite is configurable via available system tools and rules-driven logic, and is also expandable, with the ability to add new functionality—not just by customizing, but by downloading from the hosted site, thus minimizing upgrade and implementation costs.
The TradeStone Suite is also a scalable, multi-tiered, server-based enterprise application built on the standards-based Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development model, with support for Web services and extensible markup language (XML) leveraged for integrations (see Understand J2EE and .NET Environments Before You Choose).
On the database tier, the product supports IBM DB2 and Oracle, and IBM WebSphere as the application server. The Web server (which can be Microsoft Internet Information Server [IIS] or Apache Tomcat) has bidirectional communication with the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser via the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)/secure socket layer (SSL) combination. The application security consists of user authentication, network security (via firewalls and SSL), and the application security per se, which is role-based and also data-based (to provide transaction- and field-level security).
The Apache Tomcat open source web servlet container complements TradeStone's own model-based "data anywhere" architecture spanning multiple systems, thus leveraging an organization's current IT investment. It also aims at driving down IT costs by eliminating the need for redundant databases, replication and continual reimplementation, and retraining of employees and trading partners. With this architecture, the TradeStone Suite accesses data from multiple applications without copying or replicating the data, and ultimately eliminates the need for modifying existing applications. The "data anywhere" architecture can accept data from a variety of data sources and formats, and allows an application to provide a unified view of a transaction even if its constituent data is located in several different databases.
Rather than a traditional costly database-to-database integration approach, TradeStone's integration approach consists of a user interface (UI) engine, a model-based application logic independent of the database, and a dynamic data mapping integration engine. XML is used for data mapping and process definitions to Web services, legacy systems, and databases, or to any other third-party system. Data channels to data sources like databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, legacy applications, and so on, can go via Java database connectivity (JDBC), Web services, and messaging.
In other words, by leveraging the integration capabilities of standards-based Web services technologies, TradeStone has been able to put together an application that can be relatively quickly configured to shift data in and out of traditional enterprise planning systems. This should allow buying organizations to more easily intertwine the basic procurement information these systems typically store, with crucial sourcing data such as specifications, schedules, and statuses.
Also, to tackle the aforementioned global sourcing issues, the product can be sliced into several logical layers that cater to data and content management, embedded intelligence, dynamic processing, and industry engines (such as costing, planning, order batch sizing, and event management). For now, it suffices to say that the functional layer caters to the overall product design-to-delivery process (with underlying critical path and event management capabilities), logically grouped into five major modules: Design & Planning, Sourcing, Order, Logistics, and Finance, which will all be detailed later in this series. The collaborative layer is to help establish the nature of a collaborative process, as well as the roles and responsibilities to leverage trading partners' assets for mutual benefit. This is provided via shared data, alerts, automated emails, shared business processes, authorizations, and approvals, and is independent of the underlying data source, which should result in fewer delays in the critical steps in the supply chain.
Given that functionality alone is not sufficient if it is not guided by the business process context, the process layer is where the data is interpreted, both in terms of the functionality it calls upon, and the process it fits within (for example, the role of shipment details). The layer provides the tools that allow the application to be configured to support well-oiled business processes, rather than to be shoehorned (see Business Process Management: A Crash Course on What It Entails and Why to Use It). Closely related to this is the intelligence layer, where the system inherently understands how to process tasks, and where the complexities of international and domestic trade are masked from the user to let them focus on their particular job. The intelligence layer provides content as well as functionality, such as harmonized tariff schedule (HTS) data.
To bolster these two layers, in mid-2004 TradeStone Software and ILOG announced that ILOG JRules, a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, would enhance TradeStone's flagship product. The combination of TradeStone's global sourcing software and ILOG JRules has been enabling manufacturers, retailers, and other businesses involved in global trade to configure, maintain, and change their business processes with increased agility in response to business growth and other dynamic business demands.
Electronic sourcing refers to the ability to bring together different trading partners over the Web into a supply chain network that responds to changing market demands. ILOG JRules, which allows the business logic embedded in business applications to be represented as rules that can be managed by business analysts, supply chain planners, and other business users, enables businesses to automate business policies, procedures, and best practices, improving resource management and accelerating investment in business process management (BPM). As a key component of the TradeStone Suite, ILOG JRules has enhanced supply chain usability for IT and business users, helping to ensure that the suite is scalable to the needs of TradeStone's customers. Compliance solutions powered by ILOG JRules monitor high volumes of data in real time, enabling the immediate detection and reporting of faulty or fraudulent information. By embedding this industry-recognized business rules engine, TradeStone believes that the suite is deployed more rapidly, while the best practices are available too.
Last but not least, the underlying tools layer supports all of the layers of the application to reasonably rapidly bring together, configure, implement, and maintain a solution. It consists of features like the Query Builder, Model Builder, Composite Screen Builder, Step Builder, Business Rules Builder, Collaboration Tools, Integration Mapper, Application Configuration, and so on.
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