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Newspaper Auctions: Tabloidot.com
Summary
This is an e-Procurement site for procurement of newsprint and other raw materials by tabloid companies. The solution exploits the Auction and RFQ business models built into MarketServer.
Challenge
Newsprint Industry is under ever-increasing pressures due to competition from electronic media as well as mounting operating costs. The optimization of procurement process through e-Procurement solutions is one of the ways in which the operating cost reduction can be achieved. Also, the web-based automation of purchase process can prevent newsprint stock-out scenarios thereby preventing production cuts. For the traders and sellers, eBusiness solution realizes a global reach for their products.
Solution
The solution developed exploited the auction and RFQ business engines of MarketServer product. Forward and Reverse Auction were implemented in this portal.
The portal was designed as a composite of 4 sub-portals:
- Newsprintauction.com Auction/RFQ site for Newsprint
- Newspaperplates.com Auction site for Newspaper Plates
- EOQ module The module for offering Inventory Management facility to tabloid companies based on Reorder Levels and Economic Order Quantity (EOQ).
- Miscellaneous The site for trading miscellaneous newspaper items such as Ink, Film, Chemicals, etc.
The interoperability and extensibility of the MarketServer has been exploited for the integration of custom modules like EOQ. The powerful services offered by MarketServer in User Registration, Content Management, Community Services, Product Management, Administration, Reporting and Transaction Management are also utilized to enrich the site experience.
Technology
The site uses the Java version of MarketServer, an integrated framework developed by Calsoft for e-marketplaces and procurement solutions. The auction engine is built using J2EE technologies – Enterprise Java Beans, Servlets, Java Server Pages etc., The auction engine is deployed with IBM WebSphere as the Application Server and IBM Http Server as the web server. The business logic of the auction engine is built into Session Beans and the data is encapsulated using Entity Beans. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition is used as the database server.
The solution is designed on the Microsoft Version of MarketServer. The solution exploits technologies like COM/COM+, MTS and ASP. Verisign Secure Server technology is used to ensure complete security of sensitive commercial transactions.