Client’s business need
The client wanted to build a b2b social commerce platform to connect the long tail of supply to the long tail of demand. Moreover the client wanted the platform to enable buyers and sellers to connect globally, collaborate around purchases, recommend each other, negotiate costs, build affiliation etc; basically, simulate all the features of B2B commerce on a global platform with a social layer around it.
Solution provided by Kuliza
Understanding the scope and scalability of this social commerce platform, Kuliza decided to build this platform using Drupal content management system. The platform was planned to have the following, to provide B2B social commerce to small and medium scale professionals and businessmen:
- Ability to manage multiple roles and responsibilities as vendors, manufacturers, suppliers, buyers etc.
- Online shopping store for each vendor / supplier with appropriate marketing and analytical tools
- Rating, voting, review features for enabling consumer conversations and testimonials to assist in purchasing decisions
- Collaboration on purchases between designers, retailers, manufacturers and consumers
- Ability to show contextual pricing depending on user profile, geography, reputation etc
- Customized shopping cart capable of B2B type transaction with capability to segregate cart into multiple vendor
- Ability to negotiate on deals
Project implementation
To give the B2B social commerce platform the required capabilities, following features were implemented:
- Custom dashboard depending on roles, responsibilities and permissions
- Product / shop curation tools like rating, reviews
- Discussion and conversation tools like forums, Q&A, blogs
- Ubercart configuration to morph from a B2C to B2B marketplace cart
- Negotiation and contextual pricing engine
- Catalogue management tools and custom search engine for product browsing
- Integration with Facebook / Twitter and other social networks
- Price list hierarchy which varies with respect to geographies, occasions and preferred customers
- Tools for managing workflow throughout the transaction process
Impact
When the clients came to Kuliza, they had lost significant time to market and rejected multiple technology partners in the course of last 8 months.
Kuliza rebuilt the whole platform from scratch in a period of 3 months. In the due course of time, following innovations were brought on to the product to deliver the most appropriate functionalities:
- Secure transaction management and invoice generation tool which was built from scratch by Kuliza
- System integration with FEDEX and US postal services
- Country specific pricelist for products with support for customer specific pricelists and mulitple currency support
- Personalized shop microsite for every organization to showcase their products and services
- Apache Solr Search Integrations for fast searches throughout the site
The product is set to launch around March 2011