Third Party Order Fulfillment Portal

Third Party Order Fulfillment Portal

Project Description :

This Client Z was looking for development of this project to envisages provision of e-commerce for people in continent B countries who cannot do such transactions in normal course with US based online retailers as shipments from such web based stores where the customer should have a credit / debit card with US address. The core proposition of this application was to provide Client Z's USA debit card registered with VISA to continent B countries customers with shipping / billing address associated with card as the address of Client Z in USA

Hence customers can top up their debit cards by depositing funds in their local branch which was a partner bank (example X Bank, continent B country) of Client Z. The customer account was maintained by the USA branch of the partner bank (example Y Bank, New York) with address as the US address of Client Z. The customer can do Internet payments and transactions, some of which has result in shipment of goods to delivery Client Z's Hub USA. Goods arriving at USA hub were bar-coded, linked to customer accounts and shipped via courier service provider to customer's address in continent B countries with integration to courier services provider API for easy tracking. Customer account data can be browsed by Client Z's employees and call center / support personnel.

Capability Analysis:

The purpose of this application was to enable people in continent B countries, who do not possess credit cards, to shop on internet e-commerce sites and receive shipped goods from US to their home locations via the US based delivery hubs of Client Z. The key point was that in order for such a transaction to happen the debit card address must be a US address. In order to implement this vision, the Client Z had created the following arrangement with continent B country bank which has branches in both continent B as well as in USA:

1. If a customer in continent B country wants to visit a branch office of X Bank of continent B county, he fills in an application on paper and hands it over to cashier with an initial deposit.
2. The bank cashier, who is an authorized user of the Client Z application, enters the customer details provided into a registration form and requests the card issuing department to create / emboss a debit card for the customer. A login on Client Z web app was also issued to the customer.
3. The customer account is created in X bank-New York with Client Z's primary address and actual customer address in continent B country as the secondary shipping address. The issued debit card was registered with Visa so that the customer can now make purchases on the Internet e-commerce sites.
4. Some of these Internet purchases done by the customer using the Client Z's card has involved shipments for which the address was the US address of Client Z. After purchase, these shipments would arrive at Client Z's delivery hub from the Internet merchant with whom the customer did the transaction.
5. There is an application super-user who can define new users and manage existing application users with various roles and access rights
6. The Client Z's employees can view all transactions for each customer account, as per access rights and would receive shipped packages for some of these transactions
7. The check-in stage is about receiving the shipment and updating the status of the specific transaction for the specific customer
8. Payment Processing involves online payment taken from customer towards storage / shipment charges using the Client Z Visa card details. If payment gets declined, a reminder is sent to customer to deposit funds in his account and inform Client Z which was once again charge the card. In case of delinquent cards where such shipment charges cannot be charged to card due to lack of funds, the shipment is returned to original merchant who provides a partial refund and all shipping / storage charges are deducted from the net refund deposited in customer's Client Z's - X bank, continent B country card account
9. Checkout involves dispatch of packages from Client Z's delivery hub as these packages were picked up by courier services provider staff.
10. Customer also gets a login on Client Z's web application to view transaction and shipment details and post messages / get customer support services in chat mode.

Technology Architecture

The main server of Client Z was in the USA office with a Windows 2003 operating system and MS SQL Server 2003 / 2005 as database server. The programming of the core application was done in ASP.Net 2.0 using VB.Net / C#.Net as coding language. External users like customers or call center executives have access to this application via a HTML browser interface. Cross Browser compatibility was ensured. Java based architecture can be used as well but it would raise the development cost by about 30-40% partly due to better RAD capabilities of .net tools and partly due to higher market billing rates for Java programmers.

The partner bank (like X BANK, continent B country) was maintaining a dedicated server to store customer account and transaction data. This partner server was run on ASP.Net application on a Windows 2003 server and was interfaced with internal core-banking application of the corresponding server within the same bank in USA where the customer Client Z account is maintained. Courier services Provider API was integrated with Client Z application.

Devices like Bar Code scanner and if required an electronic weighing scale was integrated to a rich desktop based Client Z interface used by Client Z employees in USA. This desktop interface had an IE window which directly harnessess the capabilities of the ASP.Net application on the Client Z USA Server.

Tangible Benefits:

1. It has authorized the users to collect consumer information used to create a card account & to approve and activate.
2. The application has an interface which card holders can log into and review their transactional information. It has also given the card holders to make changes to specific personal information.
3. The Application interface that allowed the Client Z to perform logistical data entries & enabled Data security was of highest priority & must be real-time data transfer between partnering entities.