Easylink Services Corp., a hosted business process outsourcing services provider based in Piscataway, N.J., and TradeTrans Inc., a provider of Web-enabled business intelligence reporting service based in Beaverton, Ore., have teamed up to offer EasyLink TradeSmart, a tool designed to lower supply chain costs and improve efficiencies in an era of ever-increasing globalization. The Web-enabled BI tool integrates EasyLink's electronic data interchange (EDI) service features with TradeTrans' TradeSmart supply-chain BI reporting services. EasyLink TradeSmart offers visibility reporting on order processing, fulfillment and financial reconciliation activities. The tool allows organizations to track and monitor supply chain activities from the initial order through to the final payment. Companies can track business data, as opposed to simply the transactions, thus improving their ability to improve processes and control expenses.

EasyLink TradeSmart is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that takes the data moving through the supply chain, from ordering to billing to shipping to funds transfers, and puts it into a single view for the organization. EasyLink TradeSmart integrates EasyLink's electronic data interchange service features with TradeTrans' TradeSmart Web-enabled supply-chain BI reporting capabilities. The service is a real-time analytical tool, which is constantly being updated as new information comes across. It allows finance to get detailed reports of everything connected with a particular order. "The benefits from the point of view of treasury are that it allows for better cash management, and you can do some very good analysis on payments. Plus, being able to track the data for two years helps with compliance issues," says EasyLink's EDI product manager Tim Frischholz.

Adds EasyLink's Henry Bayard, vice president for strategic initiatives: "The service bridges the supply chain with the financial: it gives visibility into the logistics piece as well as the financial piece." In addition to being available as a standalone product, EasyLink TradeSmart is also designed to support a trading community, where suppliers can access the same supply-chain data and reports.