Online purchasing system
Background
devspiration collaborated with NEXUS COGNITIVE to develop a customized online purchasing public platform for a US-based local purchasing cooperative. The end-client wanted to simplify the services procurement for public entities while keeping the process transparent and compliant. Plus, the platform had to be scalable so that the client could easily update their solution.
| Client | NEXUS COGNITIVE |
| Vertical | E-commerce |
| Buyer persona | Public educational institutions |
| GEO | USA |
| Technology | .NET, .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, C#, EF Core, Razor Pages, PingOne SSO, Vue.js, BootstrapVue, Azure Cognitive Search, Microsoft Azure |
| Services provided for the client | Application Development, Testing, Architecture, User Experience Design |
Goals and challenges
Public organizations have to follow a procurement cycle to find product and service suppliers. The traditional process is lengthy, involves a lot of paperwork, and doesn’t guarantee the lowest pricing.
The goal was to simplify the process with an extensive online marketplace. Our solution must help organizations find the right supplier for equipment, supplies, and various services (like repairs or maintenance) at the most favorable terms.
The client had envisioned an ideal web application that would help organizations:
- Find the best suppliers based on their needs
- Automate requests for quotes (RFQs)
- Buy selected products or services in volume
- Create requests to multiple suppliers for term negotiations
On top of that, the platform had to have a scalable infrastructure that could handle large amounts of data.
Solution
We selected Agile SCRUM methodology to jump-start the development and maintain a close feedback loop with the client’s teams. That also helped ensure that the web application followed the desired business logic.
It was decided to go with the Microsoft Azure platform for its scalable cloud architecture, load balancing tools, and autoscaling of computing resources. The back-end team chose the Microsoft .NET development platform with the ASP.NET framework, EF Core data access tools, and Razor Pages model. The Vue.js and BootstrapVue component libraries were picked for the front end.
Some more details.
Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search
The search engine was critical for the platform, so we implemented Microsoft Azure Cognitive Search to ensure an accurate search experience. This technology allows users to find relevant products, services, or vendors with full-text and phrase searches (and even with grammatical errors).
User-role permissions
Each user category (organizations, suppliers, and system administrators) got a separate interface and design to make the app more intuitive. More importantly, we restricted access to the system to authorized users, making it more secure.
Microsoft Power BI
The Microsoft Power BI helped us make a customizable reporting tool with numerous metrics (such as product fees, commissions, and others) and immersive dashboards. Later on, we allowed system administrators to view web pages for different user categories to help them provide technical support.
System optimization
We also found additional ways to modernize the system along the way, namely:
- Refactored most of the functionality on the web app’s search functionality, making it much faster
- Identified and resolved time-out issues the database queries
- Built and designed a new system for RFQ management
- Added extra filters for RFQ searches and enhanced its performance
Our team went the extra mile to modernize the system beyond the initial plan. We even created demo versions to showcase features that can benefit the platform. This convinced the stakeholders to let us add things that would have otherwise been skipped.
Results
We designed the database structure, implemented an advanced search engine platform, optimized SQL queries, built back-end controllers, and worked with front-end components. Moreover, our team handled all technical aspects and consulted with the client only about the business logic implementation.
The result is a high-performance and scalable web application platform that lives up to expectations. Plus, we made it easy to update its features and implement new services via APIs.
The purchasing portal allows organizations to discover qualified suppliers for the optimal price, save time otherwise spent on needless bureaucracy, and comply with local regulations. The platform currently connects over 7,800 entities, including government bodies, educational organizations, and nonprofit agencies, and spans across 16 sponsoring states.
Tech Stack
What our clients say
Will Strohl
СEO & Founder, Upendo Ventures
Before starting Upendo Ventures, I led the team at Hotcakes Commerce. At the time, it was a thriving commercial e-commerce platform built on top of the most popular ASP.NET CMS known as DNN. Hotcakes Commerce was rarely not seen in the top 3 selling extensions overall for DNN throughout its entirety as a commercial product. While it’s since been re-released as an open-source e-commerce solution, its popularity has not faded. This popularity is primarily due to the stability and high-quality features it’s boasted over the years. Many of these features were either built or started by the team at devspiration. With Hotcakes Commerce being at the core of what started Upendo Ventures and its continued success as one of our specialties, I can confidently say that the devspiration team has been a cornerstone of what sparked it all. I’d recommend them for all of your custom software needs. You can trust their attention to detail and expertise for all of your mission-critical software projects.
Artem Ruzak
Covizmo Partner
devspiration team helped us to develop a PDF parsing framework for our cloud based image inspection platform Azenzus. They accomplished this goal quickly and professionally. We enjoyed their proactivity, dedication and detail-oriented approach to software development. Highly recommend devspiration as a reliable technology partner for other businesses.
Robert Wells
CEO Allocable
devspiration partnered with our core development team and became an integral part of our engineering efforts on the first release of our SaaS product. They quickly adopted our in-house standards and culture, and provided cutting-edge development on new technologies that our team did not have expertise using at the time.
We are truly grateful how quickly they assimilated into our team and for the high level of attention and professionalism every team member provided.
