The customer sells a large range of 3rd party and in-house subscription services along with proprietary client software and various delivery methods. Many of their international sales are via local resellers.
We made a custom-built ERP-type system enabling the resellers to:
It was also decided to build an incorporated audit trail of all events in the system which would help the customer keep compliance with the 3rd party provider's contracts and regulations.
The system was built as a set of modules which could easily be extended to form the basis for a company-wide intranet with the user system providing access to other administrative applications. For example, it would be fairly simple to add accounting capabilities to the system to greatly extend its usefulness.
The
administration and using the system are all performed in the same environment.
Using a supervisor login simply causes a wider range of options to appear.
The permissioning system is very fine-grained, allowing users to be set up
with a wide range of specific rights. For example, this could be used where
a reseller wants somebody in their office to be able to log in and update customer
records but not to be able to make modifications to their subscriptions.
The customer's legacy system had also made it very difficult to obtain certain
datasets. This was solved here, bringing obvious benefits to the customer's
support desk and marketing department. The customer is now able to understand
which subscribers globally are using which services, whether they have current
model satellite cards, distribution of services by location, churn rates and
so on.
The
inbox system also brings significant reduction of administration.
When a new announcement is posted, each recipient receives a notification by
email with the direct url of the announcement (accessed by logging in). Each
user has an inbox with a large number of search and filter options so that
they can backtrack easily through announcements. There is a an icon always
visible, indicating whether the user has any unread mail. Announcements can
contain html and multiple attachments and be sent only to specific resellers
or groups if required. A requested feature from the customer's management was
that it would be possible to tell which recipients had read a particular announcement.
The
document and file download areas were an elegant solution to the problem
of secure file access via a web browser. Usually this is done using password
protection. However, this is easily crackable by brute force and presents
an extra hurdle to the user. We designed a different technique,
with the files themselves located completely outside the web tree and piped
in.
Browse screens have a large number of sorting and filtering options along with
useful tooltips and record highlighting. This results in a very comprehensive
and easy to read view of the data in a small screen area.
The client sells monthly subscriptions to various in-house and 3rd party data feeds delivered as a package through its client software. The customer wanted a way to sell subscriptions online, taking payment by credit card.
The data feeds have highly complex pricing and many of them require separate contracts to be signed.
The
system has been designed to hide as much complexity as possible from the
user whilst maximising data capture.
The user is taken through 3 simple steps: entering their personal details,
choosing their services, and finally reviewing the order and entering payment
information.
Each
service has two fees: one from the client and one from the 3rd party supplier.
The client usually collects both of these. 3rd party supplier fees are
in various currencies and have their own price schemes which can be based
on various factors such as number of terminals, professional status of
subscriber, location of terminal etc. These fees are subject to change
from time to time and it was specified that it should be possible to create
scheduled fees (this also allowed time-limited special offers if required).
In addition the customer charges fees for each service which again vary
in amount and currency dependent on subscriber's professional status, terminal
number and location.
Administration
of services, prices, exchange rates and contracts is performed by a small
browser-based application suite. Contracts are maintained in a browser-based
WYSIWYG editor which also allows the administrator to cut+paste Word documents.
There is also a simple reporting application which allows an administrator
to see which users have signed up
ordered by name, country or date. This
also allows the administrator to view data captured from incomplete orders,
choosing by the various stages completed.
The client needed a way for site visitors to request to be contacted by the appropriate sales area. We suggested that these should be stored and tabulated so that the sales admin can log in to a report of these requests.
Visitors to the site can request to be called back by filling in a short form.
The relevant sales group is informed of the request by email.
Sales staff can log in to a summary
report.
This is a simple but highly flexible CMS (Content Management System).
Main features:
We are working on a major rebuild of this with a more sophisticated distributed publishing process in mind. New features will include full embedded in-page editing of all content; all dynamic content to be encapsulated as XML widgets; in-depth categorisation of content; fine-grained content permissioning; content/page scheduling; a full workflow which will synchronise editing, publication and translation; full separation of all site graphics and html layout/styling allowing cosmetic revamps to be completed by a designer alone.
CMS guide: overview
CMS guide: edit popup screen
As well as creating leading-edge business applications, we like to work with media companies on innovative products that fully leverage the possibilities of current technology in a functional and practical way.
Worm Interface is an independent record label who wanted to release mp3 files
on their website. However, they found the ID tags of mp3s to be a limiting
factor. On the one hand, the tags were interpreted differently by the various
players and on the other, the record label wanted something that would easily
link back to their online shop to enable the listener to buy the album of the
song they were listening to and find out more about the artist and so on. They
considered it a fair deal to give some tracks away to fans and to get a bit
of advertising and website visits in return. When Flash started to include
an mp3 decoder we realised that this would be an excellent solution.
The main obstacle in persuading a listener to download a legitimate file rather
than an mp3 from a file-trading network is that the listener will naturally
choose whatever offers most value and it is hard to compete with a free product.
We attempted to add value to the track in two ways:
Availability. Finding a good quality version of a particular track on a file-sharing
network can be a time-consuming business. And when you have found it, the download
will often get interrupted or terminated. So the file we created was to be
freely available at the label's website on a shareware-type license, encouraging
fans to email to friends, make available on their homepages and so on. This
also had an element of 'viral advertising' of course.
Video. The label was known for its strong visual identity and one of the things
that they didn't really like about raw mp3s was the removal of all presentation.
They felt that his made the music become more of a commodity and lose some
of its individual identity. Flash was designed for visual presentation of course
and so we added further value to the files by including visuals. We also commissioned
New York animator Mumbleboy to produce a full-length Flash video for one of
the tracks.
More info at: http://www.worminterface.com/mp3s
Sometimes it's nice to make a simple well-designed site using just basic HTML. We like to feel we bring the same level of attention to detail and usability to all our projects, regardless of budget.
Versus
electronics is a semi-organised event which has been running for two years
now. We pray that next year we will get more than a couple of days to make
the site ;)
http://www.versuselectronics.com/2003
http://www.versuselectronics.com/2002