Next Generation eProcurement Solutions | NexProcure Case Study

Company Overview

Nextenders has been delivering next generation eProcurement solutions to various Indian state governments and PSUs since 2003. That’s over 350,000 tenders to date; around 6,000 tenders per month; worth over US$15 billion. Their intuitive, flexible, next-generation technology has made them the market leader in India. Nextenders also has operations in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

They are eProcurement specialists. eProcurement their core focus and that has led Nextenders to develop solutions that are unrivaled in their ability to deliver what their customers need.

Problem

Transform current product line so as to cater to various tendering processes on the global scale and to multiply growth. Give implementers the ease of customization by developing a fully configurable product.

Problem Description

The client was facing problem in growing business to other geographical boundaries as they were finding it difficult manage their existing product developed in classic ASP. Moreover, the usage of Microsoft Technology at many places made it difficult for them to be cost effective as other vendors.

Considerable customization on each client led to an inefficient, error-prone and unmanageable code.The system was not fully configurable leading to limitations in the customers they could get on board.

NexTenders was getting a lot of inquiries for other periphery systems like Pre-Tendering, Post-Tendering, e-Auction and catalog management system. They had no technical expertise to develop these
products.

Solution

Nextenders provides a set of integrated applications that enables end-to-end automation of all activities in any procurement process – from indent, tender preparation, bid submission, bid closing, bid opening and evaluation, bid negotiation, award, contract management and reverse auctions, including that for Government and Public Sector companies.

The client’s existing product had limited configuration possibilities and was difficult to manage. Digicorp brainstormed with client implementation experts and designed a core dynamic transactional framework with systematic workflow and template engine.The configuration allowed the end client to design the system as per his need basis with minimal intervention from the developers.Digicorp worked with NexTenders implementation team for initial product implementations.

We derived the concept to comply database, platform and browser independence.The database independence was achieved by use of Hibernate thus reducing the need to modify the code as per the database. By the use of GWT, browser independence was achieved.With Java as the programming language, the deployments were not limited and could run on both Linux and Windows.

Due to the critical nature of the product where security and data integrity was of utmost importance, the system was made compliant with Nextenders’ patent pending Secure Bid process. The simple and effective product design to reduce the long-term support and maintenance cost.This was achieved by using client side encryption/decryption and hashing.

Digicorp designed Auction Engine product to increase the offerings. We collaborated with Nextenders’ marketing team to help them deliver successful sales demonstrations. We also build a capacity to support the new products. We regularly advised Nextenders’ management for defining and streamlining the product plan from technical and business aspect

Platform Overview

nexprocure-platform-overview-image

[URIS id=2411]

Results

NexProcure delivers an end-to-end procurement to payment (P2P) solution that requires minimal configuration to reproduce your manual procurement process online. This has helped reduce training costs and improve the change management by giving buyers the complete control over their procurement process.
The system has surpassed simple document exchange to a tamper evident procurement process which can accommodate complex procurement process requirements.
Due to the configurable nature of the product, the system could also cater to various other tendering processes such as Dispute Resolution, Asset Disposal, and Post Tendering.
The System is being used by Government of Botswana and Government of Mauritius for contractor registration and e-Tendering along with other states’ government for electronic tendering.
NexAuction is an auction engine which is being used by more than 25 banks and has almost touched the daily average of 10 auctions, worth more than 10 million.
NexLite is a lightweight, SaaS-based, electronic tendering and auction engine to serve the mid-sized organizations. This is recently launched in the UK to target EU market.
NexProcure product has been recently shortlisted as technically superior and the most cost effective (L1T1) in RFPs of Kenya Government, Philippines, and Mauritius Government.

Platform Overview

Development Prospects

NexProcure aims to ensure full government ownership and sustainability at reduced purchasing costs and administrative costs due to automation of tasks. It intends to reduce chances for corruption and increase transparency of e-procurement processes. NexProcure aims to deliver a highly flexible platform that can be custom-tailored to specific government needs.