SoftMediaLab LLC

Business Challenge

The Cable Alliance Holding had a need to refine their existing tender site. The existing system was designed to conduct a variety of tenders, and as often happens, it was not suitable for solving a client’s specific task - to conduct tenders for transportation. At the same time, holding tenders in manual mode did not provide optimal transportation prices, and the logistics department was tasked with reducing costs.

Contractor Selection

At first, Cable Alliance signed a contract with another contractor, but after a while he abandoned the project due to the high complexity of the development.

SML specialists carefully studied the processes and analyzed the existing site. Then we agreed on the scope of improvements, deadlines, and allocated a team. For our part, the team consisted of one analyst and one developer. As a result, the customer was able to hold the first tender for transportation in 5 months.

Solution Description

• With our improvements, the customer began to conduct tenders for transportation, as well as register and verify transport companies in accordance with their internal business processes.

• Due to the integration with 1C, logisticians no longer need to work in several systems at once, they launch a tender from the familiar interface of an ERP system. All data and documents exchanged between systems is performed automatically.

• The contractual documents for each cargo transportation are now compiled automatically by the system based on data from 1C and data from the tender site. Logisticians only need to choose a winner, and transport companies just print out documents.

• All notifications that the system exchanges with bidders and organizers are sent automatically, which greatly saves time on communication.

• The logistician can cancel or change the tender conditions at any time by launching a rebidding. Everything else - the selection and invitation of the relevant participants, as well as a new collection of applications - the system will perform itself.

• The new solution was able to reduce freight costs by 6% compared to the previous year in the first 6 months of use.

Solution Structure

• Public website for transport companies with a carrier’s personal account https://tender.holdcable.com/ 

• On the customer side, logistic and security specialists personal accounts  

• Integration with ERP 1C and SMTP server for sending notifications

• Content management system

Technologies

PHP 5.6, Apache 2.4, MySQL 5.0, Linux, Ajax, JavaScript