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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.
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 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 and Software:
Server:
- Windows 2000
- OfficeWriter for Excel
- FileUp
Database:
Clients:
- Excel 97
- Excel 2000
- IE4.x+
- Netscape 4.0 +
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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.
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