International Factors Group s.c. is an umbrella organisation for 60 factoring companies around the world from Japan in the east to America in the West, and operates from headquarters in Brussels. The group's Scandinavian members are Nordea, NCM, DnB and UPS Capital (Nordic).
IFexchange is a custom-designed system for exchanging factoring information between member companies. These companies use a variety of different internal systems, and IFexchange handles all the different file formats involved to give online WEB access as well as transfers of XML and C80 transaction files directly from each member company's own applications.
IFexchange is a flexible system that places particular emphasis on security, capacity and user-friendliness. The system continuously monitors the electronic exchange of standardised transactions between the member companies. IFexchange delivers a number of functions including the following:
- IFexchange checks and validates transactions, and automatically rejects incomplete or incorrect transaction details. This ensures that the recipient only downloads transactions that have been through a number of checks and validation routines. In addition IFexchange archives transaction details and produces reports that enable both the sender and recipient to readily check that individual transactions have been successfully exchanged.
- IFexchange gives individual users access to a wide range of information and essential statistics, as well as providing the basis for the group's internal invoicing.
- IFexchange provides functionality to monitor the quality of individual member company performance relative to the quality standards established by the group ("best performance").
The system has been developed by the e-commerce area of EDB Business Consulting, supported by resources from other units within the EDB group. The implementation of this system and the new technology used have given EDB Business Consulting considerable additional expertise in XML based systems. This expertise will lead to new products for the e-commerce area and the integration of further XML expertise with the e-commerce systems already offered by EDB Business Consulting.