TradeStone's Unified Buying Engine is the core engine of the Sourcing, Global Order Management, and PLM for Retail solutions that enables one unified way to view and interact with the buying process. Embedded intelligence allows users to create, plan, cost, collaborate on and track transactions. It manages reporting and queries, alerting for exceptions and offers visibility throughout the supply chain. Its embedded work flow processes foster collaboration among far flung buyers and suppliers throughout the collaborative commerce community.

The Unified Buying Engine is the underlying infrastructure upon which sits TradeStone's robust solutions for Sourcing, Global Order Management, Quality Management and PLM for Retail. Additionally, there is a powerful set of TradeStone Tools™ that further enhance the TradeStone Solutions by allowing users to precisely reflect the business processes, rules, logic, exceptions and unique nuances in the fully implemented solution.

The Unified Buying Engine operates in all TradeStone implementation environments: the traditional Web-based software, an IBM hosted solution, or the TradeStone SaaS.

The Unified Buying Engine is designed to layer over an existing buying infrastructure that may include legacy systems such as a PDM system, a forecasting system, an order entry system, a warehouse system or a finance system. Through its inherent design, it immediately enhances the existing systems with expanded functionality while converting disparate isles of information into truly collaborative nodes in one unified buying process.

The TradeStone Solutions support a gradual and phased approach, allowing a rapid deployment – usually 90-120 days – of enhanced functionality, while also filling in the gaps that may exist in other legacy or off-the-shelf applications. The Unified Buying Engine is required to support the Sourcing, Global Order Management, Quality Management and PLM for Retail solutions.