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OrderTrust GlossaryAll information, whether text or graphics,
contained in this document is confidential and proprietary information of OrderTrust LLC
and is provided to you solely for the purpose of assisting you in using an OrderTrust
product. All such information is protected by copyright laws and international treaties.
No part of this document may be reproduced or or transmitted in any form outside your
organization without the written consent of OrderTrust. The possession, viewing, or use of
the information contained in this document does not transfer any intellectual property
rights or grant license to use this information or any software application referred to
herein for any purpose other than that for which it was provided. Information in this
document is subject to change without notice. OrderTrust does not warrant that all of the
information contained herein is accurate or complete.
This glossary describes terms and
acronyms that are used throughout OrderTrust documentation.
A
B C D E F G
H I J K L M N O
P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Automated Clearing House. The ACH serves as the domestic inter-bank clearinghouse for
electronic payments. Originally intended for low value, high-volume consumer payments, the
ACH is now the principal means of executing corporate to corporate EDI payments.
ACH Credit
Occurs when a buyer requests the transfer of funds from their financial institution to
a seller's financial institution.
ACH Debit
Occurs when a seller requests the transfer of funds from a buyers financial institution
to the seller's financial institution.
An organization that interfaces to and operates on/for OrderTrust, providing and/or
using defined OrderTrust services.
Agents
These systems perform most of the work on the system, such as communicating with
external systems, security and authentication, translating messages between internal and
external formats, and performing specific business rule processing.
See also OrderTrust Hub, OrderTrust Agents.
Aggregators
An entity that merchandises products and/or services not from manufacturers or
distributors, but from predefined catalogs. An example is SkyMall, which collect products
from existing catalogs and merchandises them to its own target group. SkyMall has taken
select products from both Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer and aggregated the
products from two different catalogs into one Sky Mall Catalog.
ALP
Application Level Protocols are protocol layers that isolate any application or
customer specific requirements for connectivity to a single layer.
API
Application Programming Interface
Represent OrderTrust's added-value assets that provide distributed functional
capability.
Archiving
The process of capturing and storing all incoming and outgoing information.
Authentication
Validating the identity of an affiliate, commerce partner or presenter.
Authorization
Credit card check or certification of a cash payment commitment.
AVS
Address Verification Service, which is a provided service by the payment processer that
verifies consumer addresses based on the information contained with the cardholder's bank.
A method by which many input items are accumulated over time and are grouped for
processing during one machine run.
Business Objects
A software object containing business information and self-contained operations (for
example, an order).
Business Service
A software object performing a set of operations on a specific set of Business Objects
(for example, an order manager).
A system that allows a user to select pre-merchandised products for use in a catalog.
The term catalog may be used in many different ways. It is most often used to describe
products that have been bundled together for use in marketing to a select group, market,
industry, person, etc. A catalog is the compilation of those products that have been
merchandised to go together. In the direct marketing industry the term catalog is used
mainly to describe a hard copy catalog that is distributed via direct marketing channels
such as the US Postal Service. In the new media world, the term catalog may be used to
describe an on-line catalog similar to the hard copy catalog that comes in the mail or as
a database of sorts that specifies which products from a product database have been chosen
to reside in an on-line/hard copy catalog.
Certification Testing
The process by which OrderTrust certifies that an affiliate or commerce partner is correctly
transmitting and receiving data from the OrderTrust network.
Client
The organization or system that transmits the information to be processed by
OrderTrust.
Client-Server
A way of distributing information on a network that involves using a small number of
server programs to provide data to client programs installed on many computers throughout
the network. The server program maintains a database and provides information to the
client programs, through the network, when requested. The client programs provided a
user-friendly and consistent interface.
Clubs/Affinity
OrderTrust provides the management of programs aimed at providing and managing offers
to groups (for example, businesses or organizations).
See also Loyalty Services.
COM
Component Object Model.
Any network endpoint designated by an affiliate.
Commerce Server
Any product used to enable commerce transactions. Examples are Microsoft
SiteServer, Commerce Edition; Open Market's Transact4; iCat's Electronic Commerce Suite.
Communication Access Services
OrderTrust provides communication connectivity between merchants/affiliates and their
trading partners engaged in commerce. Benefits include one connection to all trading
partners and connectivity using each partner's native access methods and protocols.
See also Network Services.
Communication Gateways
Inbound gateways provide data conversion and routing of transactions. Data conversion
converts affiliate data to an internal representation. This process is called
mapping. See Map. Outbound gateways provide
data conversion and routing of transactions to the destination of the transaction.
For example, a payment authorization request is routed to a Payment Processor associated with the
transaction owner.
Communicators
Communicators provide standard generic connectivity, such as TCP or FTP.
Connect Mailbox
Third party software used for list file communications through the OrderTrust firewall.
Connect Mailbox has mailboxes dedicated to list customers. Files coming from the outside
will be forwarded to list through custom scripting within Connect mailbox.
Consumer
The end customer of a Presenter or Owner. In some cases, Consumers are notified of
processing that occurs for their order. This communication is currently performed via
electronic email or some other on-line or batch mechanism.
Consumer Interface
OrderTrust sends the consumer up-to-date order status information on behalf of the
merchant to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
See also Customer Services.
Content-Based Routing
Enables OrderTrust to route information (such as orders) based on the content within.
SkyMall is an example of this, where OrderTrust captures multi-merchant customer orders
and disassembles and re-aggregates them into individual merchant orders and routes them to
the appropriate merchant and/or drop shipper.
See also Fulfillment Services.
Continuity
An OrderTrust service that provides the merchant with a way to create customer loyalty
and customer lifetime value by shipping a product to the consumer on a continuation basis.
See also Fulfillment Services.
Conveyance Workflow
This workflow carries most of the processing burden for the Payment application. For
Developer's ToolSet transactions, the conveyance workflow connects to the Inbound Gateway
and calls the appropriate factories to convert the data into business objects.
Authorizations are handles as online transactions, and the workflow is responsible for
calling the appropriate services to convey, deliver, and return transaction responses to
the Outbound Gateway.
Settlements and refunds submitted via the Developer's ToolSet and Order Settlement are
handled in a two-step process. First, the workflow calls the Payment Stager Service to
stage the transactions submitted via the Developer's Toolset (Order Settlement stages
transactions using its own workflow). Once the transactions are triggered for delivery,
the workflow is invoked to deliver the transactions to the appropriate Payment Processor.
Corporate Accounts
An OrderTrust service that provides a means of managing business-to-business commerce
transactions at the corporate level versus the individual consumer level.
See also Loyalty Services.
Customer Database
OrderTrust provides a historical database of all the affiliate's merchant's, and or
marketer's customers, including profiles and purchase histories.
See also Customer Services.
OrderTrust provides customer service applications and interfaces to provide
merchants/marketers with the ability to effectively manage the life-cycle of an order to
enhance customer satisfaction. These services include order entry services, consumer
interface, customer services interface, customer database, and fulfillment services
interface.
See also Application Services.
OrderTrust provides data mapping services to merchants and affiliates that require data
transfer between one another. OrderTrust provides effective communication between trading
partners with dissimilar data formats, and also provides the data normalization required
to use any of the value-added services (for example, fraud screening or loyalty services.)
Default
Information that is owner- and format-specific, and does not vary by transaction. This
information will be used to set default values for transactions being sent to the Payment
Processor.
Deferred/Installment Billing
Provides merchants/marketers with the ability to manage flexible payment terms to their
customers.
See also Financial Services.
Developer's ToolSet
An OrderTrust product that provides an API for a client to interface
with. The ToolSet provides access to order, payment and fraud services.
See also OrderTrust Hub.
Distributed Service
A way of providing a resource over a network. It allows for more than one company to
deliver a service using standard protocols and conventions.
Distributors
Any entity that compiles products from multiple manufacturers, then may warehouse and
ship them.
Electronic Check Payment.
EDI
Electronic Data Interchange.
Encryption
The process of converting a message so that it is unreadable unless
"decrypted." It is a method of securing privacy on networks through the use of
complex mathematical algorithms. Encrypted files are usually assigned a key that must be
used in order to decrypt them.
Endpoint
See Network Endpoint.
A file format used in the Developer's ToolSet for communicating between processes.
File Transfer Protocol.
OrderTrust provides added-value services in support of financial transactions managed
over the network. These financial services include payment, fraud screening, royalty
management (funds accounting), and deferred/installment billing.
See also Application Services.
Firewall
A set of components, typically
hardware, software, and security policy, that protect and isolate an organization's data
and system from unauthorized outsiders.
Provides multiple levels of fraud detection on behalf of merchants to improve their
profitability. Fraud screening provides support for AVS, table of denial (negative file),
velocity, and credit/risk scoring.
See also Financial Services.
Fulfiller
OrderTrust provides fulfillment services for merchants, marketers, and fulfillment
houses to enhance and extend the management of orders through the fulfillment process.
Fulfillment services include content-based routing, continuity, inventory management, and
product database.
See also Application Services.
Fulfillment Services Interface
OrderTrust provides fulfillment affiliates (merchants, fulfillment centers, drop
shippers, etc.) with a data view into
OrderTrust to manage offers, product, inventory, and order information.
See also Customer Services.
The technical meaning is a hardware or
software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols. For example, America
Online has a gateway that translates between its internal, proprietary e-mail format and
Internet e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another less formal meaning of gateway
is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system, for example, AOL
might be called a gateway to the Internet.
See OrderTrust Hub.
An OrderTrust partner who creates a programmatic interface between a commerce site and
the OrderTrust network.
Implementation Testing
The testing performed by an integrator prior to full certification testing into the
OrderTrust network.
Inventory Management
An OrderTrust service that provides product inventory levels/messages to various order
entry vehicles in order to provide consumers with information on product availability
prior to actually purchasing. This also provides the order entry vehicle the opportunity
to substitute other products in the advent of a stock-out.
See also Fulfillment Services.
The OrderTrust Partner LinkSet is a 'family' of products that provide pre-programmed
components for specific commerce servers. The OrderTrust Link for Microsoft
SiteServer 3.0 is one member of this product family.
List Services
OrderTrust provides list management services (to catalogers, list brokers, etc.) in
order to provide current (if not instantaneous) buyer information to catalogers to enhance
the targeting of prospective clients. Each time a cataloger sends a payment authorization
transaction through OrderTrust, we capture buyer information and provide the information
to their list service bureau or to their house list.
See also Application Services.
Logging
The process of storing information
about events that occurred on the firewall or network.
OrderTrust provides loyalty services to merchants to increase customer retention by
managing and extending the lifetime value of their customers. Loyalty services include
corporate accounts and clubs/affinity.
See also Application Services.
Any entity that creates a product and desires to have that product sold.
A map converts data from OrderTrust's format to the wire format and vice-versa.
See also Mercator Map.
Mapper
Software that converts data into the OrderTrust standard file format.
Mapping Conversion
The process of converting data supplied by an affiliate into the OrderTrust standard
file format.
Merchandise
Goods or services that are for sale.
Merchandiser
An individual or organization that is accountable to the consumer for the product.
Merchandising
The process of selecting products and/or services that are targeted to a select group,
market, industry, person, etc.
Merchandising Interface
Provides merchants with a window into OrderTrust's product/offer management system in
order to maintain and/or alter products and their associated attributes.
See also Merchandising Services.
OrderTrust provides merchandising applications and interfaces to enable
merchants/marketers to effectively manage product(s) while maintaining integrity of
ownership and product usage. These services include rights management, offer database, and
merchandising interface.
See also Application Services.
Merchandising System
A system from which a user may choose products and/or services to use in merchandising
to a targeted group. A merchandising system may be as complex as the rules that are
applied to each product. Merchandising systems may have to deal with multiple pricing
structures, associates SKUs, sized descriptions, product images, platform/channel rules,
etc. The goal of any merchandising system is to allow a merchandiser to make all
product-based decisions within one system. All product, channel, platform, media, and
graphic information should be available to help make those decisions.
Merchant
The organization that owns the-right-to-sell merchandise and desires to market and sell
it.
Any commerce partner that receives data from the OrderTrust network.
Network Services represent OrderTrust's fundamental assets. They provide the ability to
facilitate efficient and cost-effective communication/commerce for merchants and
affiliates by providing one connection to OrderTrust to reach multiple trading partners.
Notifications
Outbound messages from OrderTrust to an affiliate to inform them of changes in status.
Notifications are triggered by system state changes.
Provides a database of customer promotional offers. This database can be created (built
and branded), modified, and deleted by the affiliate using the Merchandising Interface.
These offers can be time based and/or marketer based, etc.
See also Merchandising Services.
Offer Management
In many situations, manufacturers, suppliers, resellers, etc. are separate and distinct
entities. Because these entities all have rights and/or privileges associated with the
products they have "acquired", there exists a need to manage each entity's
"offers", all the way up the supply chain. Offer management is the control
mechanism for establishing the rules of all members of a supply chain.
OPP
Microsoft's Order Processing Pipeline, which is part of the Microsoft SiteServer,
Commerce Edition product.
Order
A single electronic description of merchandise and its attendant method of payment,
including shipping instructions, as generated by a consumer.
Order Conveyance
The process of acquiring, routing, and fulfilling orders.
Order Entry Firm
Companies that transcribe mail or fax orders in paper form into electronic form.
Order Entry Services
OrderTrust provides the ability to communicate information to and from commerce
servers, order entry, and/or telemarketing systems.
See also Customer Services.
Order Gateway
The medium for accepting orders.
Order Lifecycle
The Order Lifecycle is the process of managing an order from inception to completion.
The order lifecycle begins with the creation of a product offer. The order
then progresses through all phases of order management, managing the customer experience,
and financial management to analyze ROI and cash flow.
OrderTrust
Hub
The OrderTrust infrastructure is based on the existence of the OrderTrust Hub. This hub
is the underlying structure that contains all of the applications, systems, networking,
and communications needed to operate the OrderTrust Network. A hub defines a set of
systems and networks that are used to deliver services; it is a logical grouping of
systems and services that inter-operate. By definition, a hub can be a single physical
site, part of a single physical site or multiple sites together. Each hub contains the
following components: Agents, Affiliate Agents, OrderTrust Agents, Web Agents, and Direct
Commerce Information Bus (DCIB).
OrderTrust Standard Format (LSF)
OrderTrust data format used for internal processing.
Originating Affiliate
An affiliate that delivers orders into the OrderTrust system, perhaps on behalf of
another owning affiliate.
Other Affiliate
An affiliate that needs to be notified by the system at the request of an Owner or
Presenter, but does not serve a particular function within the system.
Owner
An affiliate who "owns" the order/items that are being presented to
OrderTrust by a Presenter. This affiliate can be the same as the Presenter, or can be a
different affiliate. An Owner can have multiple Presenters.
Owner Batch
An entry in the batch table that represents the transactions that will be delivered to
the Payment Processor at a given time (batch delivery time).
Owner Profile
A table in the Payment database that contains information about a specific Owner.
Pick and Pack.
Pass Through
Information that is specific to an Owner and/or Payment Processor. OrderTrust does not
perform any validation on this data and may add information to the pass through based on
the Owner ID and the record formats.
Pass through information is found in the default and translation tables.
Paymentech Incorporated (PTI)
A Payment Processor.
Payment Processing
Servicing transactions against computer accounts for the purpose of authorizing and
settleing against a consumer's line of credit.
An affiliate of OrderTrust that processes payment transactions. An Owner will have a
contract with a Payment Processor. During the processing of an order, the Payment
Processor is used for performing authorizations and/or deposits.
Payment Service
Provides the ability to effectively manage any payment transaction through the
OrderTrust network, regardless of batch/real-time, origin/destination, affiliates with
multiple payment processors, and banks.
PID
Presenter ID.
POS
Point of Sale. An application which allows the seller to compile product identification
information at the time of sale, frequently picking up the price information by
cross-referencing the product identifier to the price file. Often a point-of-sale system
will receive barcoded product identification.
An affiliate who presents orders or other service requests to OrderTrust for conveyance
to an end destination (a Fulfiller). This action is performed on behalf of an Owner (who
may be the Presenter). A Presenter can work on behalf of multiple Owners.
Presenter Batch
An entry in the batch table for a presenterid and submissionid. The transaction count
on this record indicates the number of transactions presented during a submission.
Presenter Profile
A table in the Payment database that contains information about a Presenter.
Product Database (PD)
- A physical storehouse for product information. Products are most often categorized by SKU. Products stored in a database have fields
associated with a SKU that refer to product
attributes, associations, prices, history, origins, etc. Information associated with a
product may also be kept in a separate database and referenced by an existing SKU in a
product database. Multiple entities may have access, rights, privileges, etc. to the same
product located in the same database.
- An OrderTrust service that provides a central repository of merchants'/marketers'
products. This database provides SKU, product description, pricing, eligible resellers,
and other pertinent product information that can be changed via batch file or web
interface.
See also Fulfillment Services.
Product Offers
Content, presented to consumers, that describes products for sale.
Products
Items to be made available for sale.
Profiles
Profiles specify attributes of affiliates that are required for conducting business
with OrderTrust. Profiles contain such data as:
- Affiliate contact information
- Communication information
- Affiliate-to-affiliate business relationships
- Security information
- Processing rules for OrderTrust services
The systems within OrderTrust rely on this profile information to determine how each
message for a particular affiliate is to be processed. If the manner in which an affiliate
communicates to OrderTrust (or the services the affiliate is taking advantage of) changes,
only changes to the Affiliate's profile are needed.
The profiles can be used to customize the service that an Affiliate receives. This
means that each Affiliate who connects to OrderTrust does not have to process in any
standardized manner.
A transaction type that is submitted to a Payment Processor for crediting a
cardholder's account.
Reports
Provide a view of the OrderTrust database.
RFMplus
RFMplus (recency, frequency, $) is a unique cooperative database service that
reduces the cycle time for bringing the names of consumers who have recently purchased
back into circulation.
RFR
Request for Refund
Rights Management
Provides the ability to manage the chain of ownership/usage of intellectual (for
example, software) to ensure proper distribution and billing.
See also Merchandising Services.
Routing
OrderTrust provides simple routing of information to/from merchants, affiliates, and
their trading partners. Routing implies we are provided the data destinations and are not
required to perform any data interpretation to determine data destinations.
"Data" can be orders, leads, payment requests, list data, etc.
See also Network Services.
Royalty Management/Funds Accounting
Provides visibility and control of the transaction value-chain to those having rights
to revenue as a result of the transaction.
See also Financial Services.
Unit of transfer and action among Affiliates by way of OrderTrust.
Service Request
A request to perform a business function.
Services
(OrderTrust-specific definition) Services are well-defined operations that OrderTrust
affiliates perform for each other in the pursuit of merchandising.
Session
The period of time starting when a Merchant establishes a connection to OrderTrust and
ending when that connection is released. It is enclosed between startSession and
endSession.
Settlement
A transaction type with an authorization code that is sent to a Payment Processor to be charged against
the cardholder's account.
Shadow File
An input data file that arrives without going through Payment. A shadow file will
have an associated data format that will determine the set of pre-processing and mapping
that needs to be performed.
Shipper
An organization that is responsible for both maintaining product availability
information on behalf of a supplier and initiating the shipment of a product. In certain
cases, this will be the supplier.
Stock Keeping Unit.
Spooling
Storing messages, then dispatching them at a programmed release time.
SSL
Secure Socket Layer. The widely accepted security protocol used on the internet.
Submission
A period of time during which Payment is receiving a single or multiple transactions.
This is enclosed between a start Submission and end Submission message.
Supplier
An individual or organization that is the source of a product or products.
Technical Implementation Analyst.
TJL Format
Thomas J. Litle format
TP
Transaction Processing.
Transaction
The data that payment receives, validates, and persists. Transactions represent
authorization attempts, settlements, and refunds.
Translation
Information that is format-specific. This information is added to the resulting mapped
record.
Called by the Delivery Service to update transactions returned by the Payment Processor
and the batch record entries.
A unique code allocated by an affiliate
to a commerce partner.
See Extensible Markup
Language.
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