Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) |
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What is TransactionExchange? TransactionExchange is an online service that enables organizations to transmit and receive business transactions in an EDI-like manner without the corresponding costs / complexity that go with traditional EDI.TransactionExchange is a platform for B2B transactions that business partners can leverage for transmitting and receiving business transactions (like POs, ASNs & Invoices) electronically. [See Overview] Who can participate in TransactionExchange? TransactionExchange can be used by organizations of ALL sizes to transmit and receive business transactions electronically. Large organizations who already have EDI capability can extend their EDI footprint by using TransactionExchange to interact with their small and mid-sized suppliers (see illustration).Small and mid-sized organizations can become EDI enabled and thus electronically transact with their large trading-partners (customers and/or vendors). (see illustration). Since TransactionExchange is essentially a transaction-routing engine that also does data-transformation, any organization can use it to transact with any other organization using any of the supported data-formats or protocols (see below). What are the business transactions and data-formats that are supported? Currently, Transaction Exchange supports POs, ASNs and Invoices in the following formats.
If an organization does not have the technical capability to process XML or X.12 formats, that organization can view the PO or Invoice online through their secure login on TransactionExchange.com. Moreover, an organization that receives a PO via our secure portal (say as a PDF document) can then submit an invoice using the same portal. This manually-supplied invoice, is then transformed into the relevant data-format and then transmitted to the Customer-organization. While we have plans to further extend the list of transactions and formats, we offer POs, ASNs and Invoices at this time. Which ERP systems are supported by TransactionExchange? TransactionExchange is essentially ERP-agnostic. It is basically a transaction routing engine which is capable of data-transformation from one format to another. Therefore, it does not really matter which ERP system is operating at a given partner's site.That said, TransactionExchange is most readily suited to interact with the PeopleSoft ERP system. PeopleSoft publishes POs and Invoices in a native XML format that TransactionExchange has been programmed to handle. We have plans to expand this capability to other ERP systems (Oracle, SAP...). Please stay tuned... But as mentioned earlier, since TransactionExchange can transform a transaction from one format to another, it really does not matter which ERP system will process it. How can my company transmit POs (and/or Invoices) to other organizations? Once your company is enrolled (see enrollment) into TransactionExchange, the steps are as follows:
* Defining your Vendors/Customers (as your Trading Partners) You're set! Transaction Exchange is ready to receive your POs / Invoices and route them to the appropriate trading partners in the appropriate format as specified. What if the parties I want to transmit a PO or Invoice to do not have sophisticated systems for processing electronic transactions? This is precisely the real value-add of TransactionExchange. A partner is NOT "disqualified" just because it is small and does not have access to heavy-duty EDI infrastructure.If a partner is unable to receive business transactions electronically, they can still log in to their secure account on TransactionExchange.com and review the transactions that were sent to it (as web-pages or as PDF documents). They can then download those transactions and process them there. What kind of audit capability can I get on TransactionExchange? Transaction Exchange keeps copious records of all transactions that were received, translated, transformed and transmitted. These are available to persons within the partner organizations that are designated as "internal auditors" to review.What kind of metrics / reports can I get on TransactionExchange? Since TransactionExchange processes your transactions, it can deliver considerable information relating to business metrics. For instance, it can track your purchasing metrics so you know what percentage of your POs were directed to large v/s small vendors. Furthermore, you can track the distribution among small-business classifications (such as Women-owned, Minority-owned, Veteran-owned, Handicapped-owned... etc). These are available in graphical forms (pie-charts, bar-graphs...) to persons that are designated as "internal auditors" to review.What is the pricing for TransactionExchange? TransactionExchange is intended to be a low cost and low complexity solution so that all businesses can participate in it effectively. Toward that end, we have priced it so that it imposes the least cost burden on participating partners while offering the most versatile service. Please visit the Pricing page for more details. |
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