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Gobookshopping.com derives its identity and
strength from its parent company Universal Books Stall Publishers'
Distributors, popularly known as UBSPD.
UBSPD is a organization of 400 dedicated personnel, spread over
its Head Office in New Delhi and branches in Mumbai, Bangalore,
Chennai, Kolkata, Patna and Kanpur. Today, UBSPD boasts of a catalogue
of around 60,000 titles ranging from art to fiction, textbooks
to books on spiritualism, technology and many more subjects. A
leading national distributor, the company is proud to represent
250 leading publishers and 5000 dealers.
Today, apart from being the number one company in books distribution,
UBSPD is poised to expand, broaden horizons and tread new grounds
in books business. |
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The publishing industry is not immune to the
pressures of today's tight economy, and is looking for new ways
to offer product to customers 24-by-7.
It's an acknowledged fact that for any enterprise to e-enable
their business process, it's pertinent that their back-end systems
have to be robust and scalable. This is all the more critical
for enterprises and online stores like GobookShopping, to be successful
in their strategies and as well as to offer customers hassle-free,
safe and secure online shopping.
The magnum size of the company presented challenges in increased
distribution and marketing costs and GBS was looking at a solution
which would minimize their selling expenses while increasing their
global reach.
To achieve the above objective GBS decided to launch an online
book store, the online book store however was to be tightly integrated
with their existing infrastructure in order to minimize fixed
costs and overlap variable costs as far as possible. The factors
crucial for effective GBS functioning are up-to-date sales
information and good communication with its suppliers.
Excellent inventory management was equally important for
GBS as the book store was to collaborate with UBSPD's various
branches and hundreds of suppliers.
The project required an innovative approach - not in the development
of the solution but for the smooth deployment across its network
of branches and amongst various employees. Considering that the
site was developed at the downturn of the dot com boom - there
was internal skepticism about the project as well. |
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GBS seeking a solution approached Icreon
for a technology solution - a solution that was to be developed
and successfully implemented by Icreon. At Icreon we decided
that an effective solution would require our system analysts to
understand the operational methodology of GBS and then develop
a solution that scalable and modular to implement. Icreon used
it experience with e-commerce implementations to develop a solution
that required minimum manual intervention and manpower support
from GBS. An aggressive promotion plan was also developed alongside
for GBS - we knew that in order to retain the interest of the
top management in GBS as a venture we would need to start showing
reasonable returns within a span of 6 months; keeping this in
mind low budget online promotions were planned, implemented
and tracked.
The GBS Book store works on a virtual inventory model.
So when you place an order, the model then places an order and
consequently tracks the receipt of the material, allocates
the order, prints the invoice, shipping label, gift message, courier
consignment note and tracks the consignment status. The whole
process is so automated that the scope for human intervention
is very little. Not just this, the system also sends critical
mails to customers automatically.
Several data mining and data analysis strategies were developed
and implemented online; all data being collected from the site
was to be constantly analyzed in order to plan give some direction
to the growth of GBS. |
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Achieving the project objectives for GBS meant
a robust back-end. GBS also had huge plans for the future, which
meant they needed a technology solution that would help them grow
and a technology that would integrate seamlessly with their existing
network and systems which were all Windows based.
The operating system selected was Microsoft Windows 2000 server
running Microsoft IIS 5.0. MS SQL Server 2000 was chosen and
implemented for building and maintaining the database of over
20,000 books.
For secure online payments through credit card Icreon implemented
a payment gateway from ICICI; as a result the site accepts
payments from all major credit cards. |
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"We are pleased
to be working with Icreon Communications. The creativity
and diversity of skill sets at Icreon have enabled us to
have a successful online bookstore. Icreon has not only
designed and developed the web site for us but has ingenuously
and with great dexterity integrated the same with our inventory
and with our offline functioning. All functions including
billing and invoicing have been taken care of. The backend
modules have been made so that our personnel can work on
them with ease.
The conscientious manner in which they handle the extensive
data provided by us and maintain the web site is commendable.
What was really an un-expected and pleasant surprise was
the excellent post sales; from the online tracking of user
behavior to the web promotion of the site. Icreon has truly
helped us in developing and implementing an e-business model
for UBSPD.
Thank you!"
Anshul Chawla
Managing Director
Gobookshopping.com (p) ltd. |
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