TradeCard's SOA (service oriented architecture) is designed to enable collaboration among all participants in a transaction independent of their technical capabilities. To facilitate a seamless flow of information and meet the diverse requirements of our members and partners, our message-based architecture can exchange information in a variety of formats, over numerous communication protocols, with 24x7 availability and flexible communication scheduling. It is a secure, scalable, and flexible environment that is designed to manage evolving buyer business processes and trading partner ecosystems and enable access to rich information throughout the ecosystem. Key features include:

Protocol independence - TradeCard's protocol adapters enable a buyer to exchange information with its trading partners independent of their respective technical capability. For example, a buyer may send a purchase order to TradeCard via AS2 and their trading partner may receive it via any supported TradeCard data communication protocol. TradeCard's supported protocols include SOAP, AS2, AS3, SFTP/SSH2, HTTPS with client authentication, EDI VAN, EBMS 3.0, FTP, email, web browser-based file upload/download, or HTML screens.

Format Independence - TradeCard's mapping engine enables a buyer and its trading partners to exchange information in a data format that is most suitable to them. TradeCard has standard EDI X.12, CSV (comma-separated value), XML, and fixed-width standard formats and can support any custom format. In addition, TradeCard supports distribution of documents in both standard and custom PDF format.

Time Independence - TradeCard can adapt to a buyer and its trading partners' transmission schedules and capabilities. TradeCard can exchange documents bi-directionally on an individual or batch basis. Since TradeCard is available 24x7, the integration architecture is always available to receive transmissions. To accommodate and synchronize with data receipt windows within a buyer's and its trading partner's organization, TradeCard can also schedule its transmissions as required.

Change Management - Trading relationships, business practices, and systems that drive information exchange change often. TradeCard uses innovative approaches to adapt to the dynamic environment of a buyer and its trading partner ecosystem.

Dynamic Alternate Identity - Each system in a buyer/trading partner ecosystem typically uses a different customer identifier. TradeCard maintains Alternate Identities that map each customer identifier to the corresponding TradeCard Member ID. This enables a buyer to transmit an identifier from their system to TradeCard yet enables their trading partners to receive their corresponding identifier. TradeCard maintains these relationships on-line in real-time.

Dynamic Lookup/Default - TradeCard uses its Lookup architecture to implement value translation during mapping. In addition, TradeCard's integration architecture includes a robust business rule engine that allows for the validation or augmentation of inbound or outbound messages according to our customers' needs. This implementation of business rules in the integration layer adds significant value, control, and flexibility beyond templates, hard-coded rules, or standard "lookup" tables, and TradeCard is able to manage these data mapping rules on-line and in real-time.

Rapid rollout methodology - The role of a map in the TradeCard architecture is to perform format translation and validation. A map combined with the Alternate Identity and Lookup/Default architecture provides a complete mapping solution. TradeCard uses a rapid rollout methodology that enables a map to be "hot-swapped" into use without interrupting service. The rapid rollout methodology is supported by an automated hourly build and test process.

Flexible workflow and Straight-Through Processing - TradeCard's flexible workflow and task routing combined with its rule-based "Auto-approve" features enable a buyer to configure and evolve its document management practices. Buyer review and approval, seller review and approval, and Straight-Through Processing are all configurable within TradeCard.

Acknowledgement - TradeCard supports up to three levels of acknowledgment - protocol, message, and business document level. For communication protocols that support it (e.g., AS2) TradeCard can return an acknowledgment (e.g., AS2 MDN) indicating receipt of a message. TradeCard can also acknowledge its understanding and validation of a message via a functional acknowledgement (e.g., X.12 997). For business documents that support it, TradeCard can acknowledge its understanding and processing via a business document acknowledgement (e.g., X.12 855). Note that functional and business document acknowledgements are available independent of the communication protocol.

Common business rules - Document validation and compliance rules are maintained centrally within TradeCard alleviating the need to implement common rules for each trading partner within a buyer's ecosystem. Custom validation and compliance rules may be applied for a buyer and specific trading partners if needed.

Proven Integration Models - From managing purchase order revisions to synchronizing procurement with fulfillment information, TradeCard's proven Integration Models and Best Practices ensure that information captured within TradeCard is accurate and timely.

Rich information access - TradeCard has 16 trade documents available across 97 events that enable access to the rich information within TradeCard. Using a publish/subscribe architecture, TradeCard can provide the information a buyer and its trading partners need throughout a transaction lifecycle. Standard and custom reports are also available for electronic distribution.

Trusted - TradeCard's strong security model ensures that information provided to TradeCard is trusted regardless of the technical capability of the provider. Whether information is provided via a secure protocol (AS2, AS3, SFTP/SSH2, HTTPS with client authentication, EDI VAN, or EBMS 3.0) or an unsecured protocol (email, web browser-based file upload/download, or HTML screens) combined with 2-factor authentication (E-identity), authentication of the information provider is assured.

High-volume - TradeCard's asynchronous and queue-based messaging architecture combined with its stateless/session-less application architecture enable quick response times during data communication exchange yet enable highly scalable, load-balanced message processing.