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Netmedia
Business Solutions' E-Commerce Control Panel: This version of the Control Panel has been designed specifically for use with the Elcom PECOS Platform as used in the Scottish Executive's eProcurement Project, to give a "simple to use" interface to allow businesses to manage their catalogues off-line and send their data for inclusion on the Platform using state of the art technology. System
Requirements Overview The Scottish Executive has put in place a framework agreement that those organisations who receive funding from the Executive should use E-Procurement as the preferred method of purchasing. Potentially this would include The NHS and Local Authorities. The Scottish Executive is the first government in the world, (except the State Legislature in California), to take steps to proceed with an E-Procurement project. It is expected that others will follow, and Netmedia will provide "Products" and "Services" needed to allow the companies who supply these organisations to offer their products and services to the organisations using the Elcom Portal. The Portal has been built by Elcom and is called PECOS. This project will introduce suppliers in Scotland to modern B2B and B2C E-Commerce practices, through which it is to be entirely expected that their confidence to use systems such as this will grow. It is an initiative of major importance because it dramatically influences the future abilities of companies in the Scottish Economy. They will soon deal with buyers using other Portals, and all of the NetMedia tools are built to allow them to take advantage of every opportunity and our software is built and maintained so it can evolve over time to deal with any Portal Supplier's technology. Netmedia has developed systems to satisfy the needs of both Supplier side and Buyer side organisations who need interactive tools to examine and edit their catalogues prior to adopting them in to their procurement Portal. Netmedia supplies one suite of products to fulfil this objective; however the suite can be sold in three separate parts. The Control Panel is the first of these three. The Control Panel is a tool which allows Suppliers to:
The Control Panel
Functionality of the Control Panel: Creating Product Content for PECOS Importing Products Wizard The "Off-line Stock Editor" part of the Control Panel provides the ability to import data about products from Excel worksheets and Access databases and CSV Files. This task is realised by Wizards, which guide the user through the procedures of identifying sources and mapping fields. For example, the Wizard Interface lists the fields required and asks the user to point to a list of the field headings of the columns in the source containing the data to be imported. The application then parses the worksheet and stores the relevant info into the Tool database. To Create and Edit Products The "Off-line Stock Editor" contains two main forms. When a user starts the application, the Catalogue manager presents a list of all the existing products stored in the tool and allows a user to either create a new product or to edit an existing one. If the user selects to create new product - A Product Form with blank text fields appears. (Note, the Tool insists that the mandatory fields be populated). A "UNSPSC Code" field button is part of the form and provides access to an additional form with lists of all codes. The User navigates using a tree of codes, and when a category is selected from the list the 8 digit code populates the UNSPSC field. A search function is also included. Also, the individual two-digit code for each category is entered in the other relevant fields, for example if the user selects the Live Animal category with 10-10-15-00 code, then 10 will go in "Level 1 Category code" field, 10 in "Level 2 code" field, 15 in "Level 3 Code" field, 00 in "Level 4 code", and 10101500 in "UNSPSC code" field. If the user points to the Level 5 code manual, the "UNSPSC code" field is updated to display new code of the commodity. If a user wishes to create a new code, at this time an automatic request is sent to the UN-SPSC Offices to agree the new code. "Unit of measure" field is a drop down list with a list of units of measure, predefined by the system. The User is able to fill this field manually - in this case the value has to be validated. After pushing the Save button a new commodity is created and stored in the tool's own database. If the user selects to edit an existing commodity the same form with populated fields appears. Then user is able to edit the information about that commodity. Monetary Fields can be adjusted by multiplying a range of cells by an integer. So, if a Manufacturers Price List is imported, the prices can be adjusted. For Fields 28, 29, 32 and 33 the Tool is able to select files on the user's computer and uploads them to the netmedia server where they are stored for users of PECOS to view or listen to them. The URL of the position of those files is automatically entered to the appropriate fields. The "Off-line Stock Editor" is able to export the commodities list to Excel spreadsheets in the predefined format. Exporting Product Data The "Off-line Stock Editor" provides the ability to export its data into an Excel worksheet and/or a CSV file. The User selects the list of commodities to be exported and all of the relevant fields regarding those commodities are stored in an Excel worksheet in the correct format to be sent to ELCOM for verification. We are currently awaiting technical details from Elcom: after Elcom's confirmation of these details the "Off-line Stock Editor" will be upgraded to directly export relevant data to the PECOS Platform.
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