Gaithersburg, MD — May 23, 2003 — B2B connectivity provider Global eXchange Services (GXS) has added automatic monitoring and integration capabilities to its Interchange Services transaction service to make electronic trading more flexible and less complex for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).
The new Trading Partner Client desktop software uses Web Services technology to automate the exchange of data between back-office applications and trading partners' systems via Interchange Services. The software comes equipped with a plug-in for QuickBooks, a commonly used accounting package among SMEs.
The software picks up purchase orders, invoices and other data from a company's back-office system, and sends them to its trading partners in their preferred formats, either electronic data interchange (EDI) or XML.
In the same way, the software scans and picks up business documents from trading partners and delivers them in the receiver's preferred format directly to a specified directory or integrates them into a back-office application. A company can set up monitoring to take place from every ten seconds to once a month.
GXS said that by using Web Services, Trading Partner Client accelerates the electronic trading set-up time by providing access to more detailed information on trading partners — such as data preferences and standards — than could be made available using alternative technologies.
In addition, GXS said that Trading Partner Client offers automation and integration of business documents with little or no requirement for additional in-house expertise: GXS runs and manages the exchange of documents, including the pick-up and delivery, translation and map creation, thus providing low-cost, quick access to GXS' 100,000-strong trading partner community.
In addition, Trading Partner Client provides access to a range of transaction services, including document tracking and tracing and communication services such as GXS's AS2 Outsourcing Service.
Richard Lovett, GXS's global product manager, said that the solution provider expects Trading Partner Client to be popular among smaller enterprises that, until now, have found electronic trading with their customers too complex to achieve. "By taking the complexity out of their hands and offering them automatic monitoring and integration, Trading Partner Client enables these companies to expand their business-to-business relationships while focusing on their core operations," Lovett said.
Trading Partner Client is available free of charge for Interchange Services Service subscribers.
