http://ibagroupit.com/print/en/case-studies/technology/other/e-auction.html

E-Auction

Customer
Oil trading company

Industry
E–commerce

Project Overview
E–Auction is an electronic trade portal designed for selling oil products, chemical products, and other goods through the internet.

The system captures information coming from local and foreign enterprises, helps manage it effectively, and optimizes resource distribution. E–Auction can be used as a part of the existing non–electronic auction system of our customer without additional software development. As E–Auction is accessible via web browser, it is available to a large number of users.

The system accumulates information about clients through a complete logging of all actions of bidders. As a result, it is possible to retrieve clients' characteristics, as well as notify them about new auctions and other applications for bidding. The system monitors registered documents, thus none of these are lost, forgotten or unsigned. The optimized workflow allows our customer to reduce the number of human errors.

The E–Auction features include regular auctions, reverse auctions, Dutch auctions, and online inspection of current and past auctions.

Project Execution
The system was implemented using a Logic Data Model (LDM) that defines basic entities, and their attributes and relationships. SQL scripts are generated using Erwin tools to create a database and assign rights to access tables and stored procedures. Afterwards, the Source Code Generator processes the LDM and generates source codes of classes for data access, initial validation, and matching with relevant fields of database tables. This development method does not involve writing of SQL queries to a database server and automates basic operations with application objects.

IBA Group implemented the following tasks:

  • Requirement analysis
  • Design
  • Implementation
  • Testing
  • Custom installation
  • Maintenance and support.

Environment
A three–tier architecture software product, E–Auction is built on Microsoft.NET platform.

  • Design: Erwin
  • Programming languages: C#, Java Scripts, HTML/DHTML/XML/WML, XSLT
  • Databases: MS SQL
  • Technologies: VisualStudio.NET 2003, 2005
  • Application servers: Internet Information Server
  • Software platform: .NET 1.1

Project Results
E–Auction automates interaction between buyers and suppliers, reduces the cost of procurement operations, and makes auctions more open and transparent. It provides an opportunity to sell oil products in a flexible and efficient way and to respond quickly to market changes.

The IBA customer held the first electronic auction at the end of 2004, signing contracts that amount to US $750,000. The second auction held in January 2005 generated US $4,2 million in proceeds.