NBT-Integrated Set of Modules for Inventory Management, Sales, Accounting and Online Shopping

National Book Trust (NBT) – a Government of India undertaking is dedicated to publishing literature and making it available to readers. In its effort to automate its operations, the organization wanted an integrated set of modules. DevelopmentIndia realized that it was business-critical for NBT to synchronize and coordinate activities. To accomplish this goal, we designed the sales & inventory management modules along with the dynamic Web presence for NBT. Centralizing data management and streamlining business processes, these modules helped NBT eliminate operational bottlenecks and operate with greater efficiency.
Customer Profile

NBT is a non-profit organization that publishes a wide variety of books in many languages. The organization publishes books in various series including informative books, popular science books, the arts, the environment, and many others. Available in 18 Indian languages including English and Hindi, NBT sells books through various channels like Mobile exhibitions, bookshops, location exhibitions along with appointed distributors and agents spread across the country

Business Requirement
NBT was operating and coordinating many of its operations manually, which made the system highly inefficient and prone to errors. In order to manage internal and external activities effectively, NBT wanted to convert the entire system to an automated setup, where the operations would be synchronized through an integrated set of online and offline modules.
Solution

Benefits
 Automated sales accounting and inventory management
 Streamlined business processes
 User authentication & administrator driven data management
 Synchronized process & data management

Technologies Used
 ASP 3.0
 SQL Server 2000
 Flash MX

Requirements

NBT wanted a system that would automate its current activities to allow synchronized management of data within NBT. As a four decade old organization, NBT is involved in many aspects of publishing, including printing and distribution of books through internal channels and authorized distributors.
The organization has four Regional Offices spanning across North, East, West, and South along with the Central office that coordinates with the Regional Offices. Due to manual operations the productivity and efficiency between these units was being impacted severely. There was lack of data synchronization, which increased the cycle time for completing various tasks. In order to overcome these operational bottlenecks and inherit a centrally managed system of inventory, sales, and transactions, NBT wanted an integrated set of modules to manage its inventory and sales while providing readers the facility to search NBT’s collection of books and place orders.

DevelopmentIndiateamed with NBT in identifying the business-critical requirements and proposed a set of online and offline modules for managing the entire NBT operations.

Centralized Data Management and Business Process Automation
There are various aspects to the NBT project, which cater to different business processes. As an integrated set of modules, each aspect interoperates with other processes to synchronize activities and manage data centrally. The way NBT functions, is through a cycle involving its four Regional Offices (ROs), distributors and the NBT central office.

ROs work independently and send data to the central office on monthly/yearly basis. This data mainly consists of sales data, billing information and revenue status. Based on this data, the Central office prepares consolidated sales & inventory reports. Each RO has its own set of distributors, agents, and clients. The RO is responsible for coordinating with these parties and sending complete details to the central office. These activities are managed through the Sales Accounting module. The distributors cannot add or modify any data through the Sales Accounting Module; however, they can view the sales status for regional offices. With the help of this module, ROs provide details about the sources of sales such as mobile exhibitions, distributors, or book exhibitions. This way, the central office can monitor the sources that contribute the most to increasing sales.

When a new book title is printed, the central office dispatches the order to the ROs and distributors, and maintains details of the dispatched stock through the Inventory Management module.

The NBT Website is managed through the administrator module. Administration is structured in a hierarchy, wherein the Super Administrator has complete control over the entire operations of the Website. The super administrator creates sub administrators and assigns them roles to manage NCCL, Clients, and the Reader’s Club. The entire NBT operations are managed in a systematic and process-based structure.

The architecture for NBT is simple and scalable. Based on a 2-tier setup, the front is developed in ASP 3.0, while the backend is based on SQL Server 2000. The front-end consists of the Sales Accounting and Inventory Management modules, which are password protected and work offline. The administrator module is online and is used to manage different sections of NBT, including NCCL, Readers’ Club and Clients. The NBT Website is publicly accessible. Each module connects to the backend database, wherein the data is stored and managed.

 

.