| Situation: |
 |
| Portum
is Europe's leading neutral intermediary and provider for strategic
sourcing and negotiation solutions for enterprises and marketplaces.
Through a combination of state-of-the-art Internet-based applications
and tailor-made consulting and business services, Portum increases
the performance of industrial buyers and sellers in the strategic
sourcing and procurement process. The product offering includes
online auctions and Internet-based request-for-quotations (RFQs).
Portum
delivers activity reports to procurement managers through
the Web. The reports include complex formulas and formatting
- and could be accessed by thousands of concurrent users.
Because of the wide use of Microsoft Excel among procurement
managers, Portum decided that their Web application should
generate activity reports in native Excel format.
|
| Solution: |
|
| Portum
considered several techniques of generating Excel on a Web server.
These included Crystal Reports, Microsoft Office Web Components,
and SoftArtisans OfficeWriter. OfficeWriter was the only solution
that provided fast, full-function dynamic native Excel reports
with licensing freedom and high performance for thousands of
concurrent users.
Portum
chose SoftArtisans OfficeWriter for the Portum Internet Trading
Platform (ITP) hosted on the Portum Extranet. ITP is one of
the main product offerings of Portum and is critical to their
business. Portum believes that the ability to generate reports
in native Excel contributes to the adoption of their Web solution.
Each
day, the Portum ITP solution generates an 200 different reports
for more than 5,000 suppliers across the globe. The reports
are streamed to users' client machine via the browser, into
Excel. The generated reports include up to 50 sheets with
advanced Excel formatting. The three servers that Portum runs
OfficeWriter on generate reports quickly with minimal resources
consumption.
|
| Benefits: |
|
Easy-to-Use
Web Application Increases Portum Product Adoption
Because
of users' familiarity with Excel, OfficeWriter contributes to
the overall adoption and success of the Portum ITP product.
Customers can access activity reports via the Portum Extranet
any time.
There
is no need for users of the Portum ITP solution to be trained
on new software - they have been using Excel for years and
prefer to receive reports in this familiar format
Simplified,
Accelerated Development.
With
OfficeWriter, Portum was able to build this functionality
into their application within only a month of one developer's
time. SoftArtisans customer service and support have impressed
them.
|
| |
 We
are very pleased with the personal support during the
early period of adoption, especially when we encountered
some difficulties supporting Excel files in different
languages. Within two days, we obtained a fix from a very
helpful Technical Support representative. |
|
Arial
Sagum
Web Project Manager, Portum AG |
|
 |
| |
Customer
Profile:
Portum AG is a neutral B2B intermediary, providing
strategic procurement and negotiation solutions.
|
Business
Need:
Fast, full function, formatted Excel reports generated
on the Web. The Portum Internet Trading Platform
(ITP) provides training, a customer care team and
integration services. The ITP starts with supplier
identification, request for information/quotation
and online negotiation. In addition, the Portum
BidXchange can be used for contract and data transmission.
|
Benefits:
 |
 |
One
month of development |
|
Interaction
between procurement organizations and suppliers
in real time, increasing competition and reducing
product costs |
|
Standardization
and automation of routine procedures |
|
Reduced
time for negotiations and contract awarding |
|
Procurement
managers able to make targeted and objective
purchasing decisions |
|
Hardware
Software:
Server: |
|
Windows 2000 |
| |
-OfficeWriter
for Excel
-FileUp |
|
| Database: |
|
SQL Server 2000 |
|
| Clients: |
|
Excel 97 |
|
Excel 2000 |
|
IE4.x+ |
|
Netscape 4.0 + |
| |
|
|
|
|
|