Business Challenge

Tracking of sales, consolidating orders from marketers and forwarding them to publishers was baffling as it was all done discretely using different applications. The challenge was to create an application where vendors could record their sales, consolidate orders from multiple sources and submit them to the publishers. There was a need to create a telephony solution that would not only allow vendors to sell magazine subscriptions but also integrate CRM functions such as assist end-users in modifying their subscriptions to various magazines and resolving subscriber grievances, if any. Solutions for the following expectations were also a part of the challenge:

  • An e-delivery mechanism that allowed the selling of e-books.
  • An online payment mechanism that would receive payments from consumers either by credit cards or by ACHQ1
  • A robust accounting system that can handle commissions and payments to be made to vendors and publishers.
  • A consorted marketing solution for vendors sharing lists of potential consumers.
  • A solution to address thousands of concurrent requests.

Mantra Solution

Mantra has a talented team of application developers who designed a solution that could meet all the needs. The offering included the following:

  • Developing the telephony solution using Asterisk, with features of a typical call center but without the need to pay extravagant charges usually associated with call centers. The features included call dialing, call waiting, call transfer, call supervision, numbers were linked to user accounts and statements.
  • Developing a secure SAAS based application that would allow users to create accounts that are independent and interconnected bases for better coordination and collaboration.
  • Creating a sturdy payment processing engine designed to systematically send out reminders, integrated with an IVR based telephony system.
  • Creating a Global Admin feature that enabled the administrators at various levels with certain privileges to administer the application.
  • Developing an e-delivery solution that delivered magazines electronically to the users depending upon their specific schedules.
  • Using tenant management solution to handle Authentication, User Roles, Auditing, Logging and so on to save time for marketing and giving a stronger TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) to the client.
  • The solution was built using web farm technology so that it could be easily migrated to a Cloud environment.

Technology

  • Microsoft .NET
  • MVC
  • MS SQL Server
  • ORM (Object Relational Mapping)
  • Entity Framework

Business Benefit

After implementing this solution, follow-up actions showed that expensive licenses to manage the telephony system were no longer needed. Today, hundreds of vendors use the solution and easily keep track of their revenues and accruals. The solution has increased the client’s overall profitability by drastically slashing the TCO.