Catalog Manager

The client receives EDI feeds from various vendors. The data from the vendors being large in volume were becoming difficult handle manually. The data had to be merged, rules applied to eliminate products that were not needed, normalize the categorization of products, normalize the descriptions across vendor descriptions. It was felt that an automated process that would accept the EDI feeds automatically, apply rules provided by the users, de-dupe the products, normalize the data across suppliers, price the products based on pricing rules provided would improve the time to availability for selling.

The solution that has been provided has the following features:
Authentication: Only users with necessary role are provided access to the application .
Category mapping: The application allows users to map external vendor categories to internal categories in an hierarchical format. The mapping can be done either one at a time or bulk by loading pre-mapped spreadsheets. The user will choose the one at a time when the number of changes are very few. The bulk loading will be used when a new EDI feed is being setup or there have been major changes in the way the categories are mapped.
Rules Maintenance: The application allows the user to provide rules that are applicable across all catalogs (EDI feeds) or rules that are specific to a catalog. The rules that can be provided allow for exclusion and inclusion of categories, description rules that work on partial or complete text fields. The user can also maintain individual rules or load rules in bulk when creating a new catalog.
Manufacturer mapping: The application allows the users to map external manufacturer codes to internal manufacturer codes. This allows the application to de-dupe using the manufacturer part number. The user can map individual manufacturers or in bulk using a spreadsheet.
E-mail notification: The application has the ability to send various notification e-mails such as the status of EDI loads, status of pricing, status of pricing, categorization, and manufacturer mapping.
Pricing: The application allows the users to set specific markups by category, vendor part number, descriptions, manufacturers, and specific internal SKUs. A final internal catalog with multiple suppliers for a product is created that can then be used to populate the web database, allow users to query the final product list, and also export to the various order entry systems that are in place.
Ease of use: The application provides a high performance, reliable and easy to use user interface that is intuitive and has help text at all points. Provides samples and how-to steps at each stage of the application usage.
Performance: The application delivers data to the user's desktop within seconds after searching the high-volume database in a reliable manner.

Technologies used: The application is designed and built keeping in mind reliability, high-speed performance and easy usability. It has been developed using Java and Oracle as the primary technologies. Java components such as JSP, Servlets, JDBC and applets are used extensively to provide the desired capabilities.