Enable Best Purchasing Practices via the Web

Business Challenge
An international marketer of agricultural, financial and industrial products and services, with over 90,000 employees worldwide, had a company-wide initiative to codify the best purchasing practices. As part of that initiative, the company sought a capability to synchronize and automate pricing updates in its procurement processes.

Solution
The company engaged ATI to create a Web-based system that allows different business units across the organization to use a common system for pricing information. To ensure scalability, performance and optimal integration capabilities, the ATI team designed a system that uses a number of key technologies, including Java, JSP, XML, XSL, Apache, Tomcat, LDAP and Oracle.

Business Results
The system provides a sophisticated capability for the company’s various business units to customize and manage subscriptions to specific pricing records. An advanced search capability allows for identification of desired items. Pricing was automatically synchronized to provide the most up-to-date data. These capabilities eliminated discrepancies in pricing and yielded greatly enhanced efficiencies throughout the procurement process.