Remote Access allows Suppliers, sourcing offices or agents as well as internal staff, such as Sales or Production control, to log onto the database remotely and retrieve information relevant to them. This includes summary and status of outstanding Orders and planned and completed events in both the PreProduction Plan and the Production Schedules. Users logged on via Remote Access can also send on-line updates for both the PreProduction plan and Production Status, as well as view and add comments about an order or production run.

Remote Access system is on-line. Anyone who has access to the Internet (whether it is the factory manager in Dongguang or the sales manager in his New York hotel room) can view up-to-the-minute order and production status. The remote application also has an option for Users to request a report. Once generated, the report is sent back to either an e-mail address or via FAX to a number specified by the User at the time of the request.

Remote Access is an Internet-enabled sourcing solution that improves customer responsiveness by enabling staff, agents, and suppliers to work collaboratively and accomplish complex sourcing tasks - such as planning, updating and tracking of pre-production as well as post order activities related to production, inspection and shipping - in hours, instead of days. Customers can view current status of their orders immediately, giving them tremendous planning capabilities. For those manufacturers and agents with appropriate security rights, task updates can be made from anywhere in the globe using Remote Access and posting on-line.

PreProduction Planning

Users can view PreProduction Plans. Suppliers can update the plans remotely. In a collaborative environment a PreProduction plan might have a broad target date for completion (e.g. ex-factory) set by Head Office. The sourcing office would then complete the intermediate dates in the plan and make it available to the Supplier or PD and Production teams via Remote Access. These participants can then view target dates for each step in the plan and update the dates for which they have responsibility.

Order and Production Status

Once a Purchase Order is received by SoftShoe or TradeIT, information about the Order is committed to the Order Tracking component and then made available via Remote Access to the other participants. As with the PreProduction Plan, each participant in the plan has access to Order Status through the system or Remote Access and can update the dates for which they have responsibility.

Flexibility

The events that are to be tracked are configured during the implementation. For some products or suppliers you may wish to have a detailed event tracking system in place. For others, a few simple events may suffice. Remote Access is designed to handle this requirement. 

Technical Information

The Remote Access client system is a small application, which can be e-mailed to a supplier or downloaded from the Internet. The system is designed to minimize administrative support. In order to make the application easy to maintain, upgrades to the program are automatically distributed when a User logs on. The only requirements are a 32-bit Windows (95/95/NT) PC with a modem and a local ISP account.