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Digonex Technologies nabs a profitable relationship with eBay.
Not long ago, eBay created a revolutionary new way to bring buyers and sellers
together. Now, a company called Digonex Technologies, Inc. (DTI) is helping to
create a second eBay revolution by making the process even easier for everyone.
On June 23, 2005, DTI unveiled Nabit, a tool that will give eBay users a new
and better way to track auctions, manage watch lists, and place bids.
Through a desktop application, Nabit offers buyers a higher level of freedom
and control by allowing them to monitor items they are watching or bidding on
without going to the eBay website. Buyers can keep an eye on many different
auctions concurrently. The application unobtrusively sits on the users desktop
and acts like a "ticker," updating constantly.
This five year old technology company started with their namesake Digonex
Consumer Demand Driven Pricing System, a dynamic pricing program that changes
prices of items in real time based on market demand. The Digonex System
automates the process for retailers, ensuring maximum profitability by using
purchasing data to pinpoint the profit "sweet spot" for each retail item.
Looking for more ways to evolve this application and introduce the concept of
dynamic pricing to the masses, the executives turned to the online auction
giant.
"eBay didn't have a friendly way to deal with increasing and decreasing prices,"
explained Jeremy Eglen, co-founder and COO, as well as General Counsel of
Digonex Technologies. "We knew that was where we should go next."
It was no surprise that eBay was receptive to the idea. After all, it was a
win-win for everyone. Buyers get free software that gives them more control,
sellers get increased bid action, and the online auctioneer itself gets a
continual presence on buyers' desktops. However, DTI still had to prove that
their application would marry well to the auction software.
The next stop for Digonex was Avanade. The goal was to create a clean user
interface that would be built in Windows. Although DTI developers were very
skilled in Java, they lacked the experience to design a unique-looking,
efficient Windows application. DTI knew Avanade's reputation as the preeminent
developer on the Microsoft platform and in January of 2005 the partnership
launched.
The first four weeks were spent quantifying, qualifying and planning. For
Digonex management, it was this phase that proved Avanade was the right choice.
"The quality and the depth of the planning Avanade undertook sealed the deal
for us," said Eglen. "That plan guided all of the development for the next five
months and laid the groundwork for the results everyone hoped for."
Five Avanade developers teamed with two, and sometimes, three Digonex
developers to build the application on C++ using ATL. There are no prebuilt
parts, the entire program is custom.
Developing in .NET was considered, but in the end, the application would have
been too large and it would have been difficult to get the graphic look Digonex
wanted. Nabit was built modularly, so in the future, it can work with entities
other than eBay. Weather, news - any information that needs to be updated
quickly for users could work on this platform.
While buyers, sellers and eBay itself all get something out of Nabit, what do
the creators of Nabit get? For each buyer who clicks on an item on their Nabit
interface and bids on that or any other item, eBay writes a check to Digonex
Technologies. In other words, the more action they bring to eBay, the more
revenue DTI brings in. Hence their business objective of massive distribution
of the Nabit software.
To reach that objective DTI came up with a plan to create an army of Nabit
suppliers. That army would come from the scores of eBay's Powersellers who
would push the software to buyers. (A Powerseller consistently sells over
$1,000 of merchandise each month.) The strategy was to create custom versions
of Nabit that would allow individual Powersellers to simultaneously display
many of their items to their regular buyers, rather than just the one or two
the buyer may be watching. For a small fee, the Powerseller gets access to a
web interface which allows them to quickly and easily change items they want to
show their buyers. This built-in advertising source gives a Powerseller an
incentive to convince their buyers to download the Nabit software from them.
Although these custom versions were not envisioned during the initial planning
phase, Avanade was able to accommodate them during development.
Development was on a tight schedule, beginning the very end of February and
finishing June 17, right on time. As an added bonus, the project came in 4%
under budget.
"The partnership between Avanade and Digonex developers delivered a very stable
application that exceeded the original specs," remarked Tom Sample, Avanade
project manager.
Yet another successful result of this collaboration was the knowledge DTI
developers gained by working with Avanade. In fact, Digonex now has enough
expertise in Windows that for Nabit Version 1.1 (due out in mid-August) only
one Avanade developer is working with two Digonex staffers.
"We're a software company, so it was hard to make the decision to outsource any
of the development," concluded Eglen. "But it was one of the best decisions we
ever made. We got the application we wanted and we're now better software
developers through our working relationship with the Avanade team."
No doubt you'll soon be seeing Nabit showing up on desktops all around you. If
you want to be sure you don't miss out on the eBay item you're watching,
download your own copy at www.GetNabit.com.
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