Client: BulMM Ltd.

Description: BulMM Ltd. is a multilevel marketing firm operating on the Bulgarian market. The company’s main business objective is building a substantial database of providers across all industries and targeting its client database towards them.

Features:
Custom integrated login system: the website features an e-commerce solution, based on one of the most popular online shopping cart systems, namely the Russian made X-Cart Pro 4 system. The X-Cart shopping cart has its own login and registration systems which are both streamlined with BulMM’s proprietary login and registration mechanisms. The website seamlessly and transparently registers clients and providers across all login modules (X-Cart, phpBB 3.0, BulMM proprietary). Thus, a single sign on experience is guaranteed – whether a client wishes to purchase products from the online shop or wishes to make a post in the phpBB forum, he or she has to sign in just once.

Invoicing: By registering individual sales to BulMM clients, providers incur certain commissions, due BulMM Ltd. The system automatically generates digitally signed proforma invoices in pdf format, twice a month for all companies owing amounts upwards of a predefined threshold amount. This operation gets carried out without any user intervention on the 1-st and 15-th of every month. Also, all interested provider companies get their proforma invoice via email as an attachment (in pdf format).
Digital signing is done using a Java class executed through the Java Runtime Environment as an external command in PHP. Digital signing is accomplished using open source tools in an effort to keep project costs low, namely iText and the Bouncy Castle cryptography suite. Expenditures incurred are only for the digital signature itself which has to be issued by a well known Certification Authority for the invoices to be recognized as valid accounting papers.

A sample digitally signed invoice in pdf format: PDFs are generated in landscape A5 paper format using the German made PDFlib® toolbox. Since the company is registered in Bulgaria, the local tax body treats digitally signed invoices as equivalent to printed invoices. In order to keep costs to a minimum, BulMM Ltd. sends its business partners invoices via email. A one-click process gets invoices to their respective recipients via email. The administration area provides a detailed listing of all proforma invoices, giving the accountant the opportunity to issue an invoice based on payments received on a particular proforma invoice with just a single click (recipient company email, VAT number, business address, etc. are all stored in the database at initial registration of the provider company).

Visa 3-D Secure/MasterCard SecureCode integration – the aforementioned X-Cart shopping cart system is tweaked to allow additional payment methods, functionality not readily available out of the box. Payment methods relying on direct debit/credit card transactions through virtual POS terminals require special tweaking of the shopping cart software, whether it be osCommerce, X-Cart, Zen Cart, etc. Virtual POS terminals and the technical aspects surrounding their use and application differ from country to country. To keep fraudulent transaction to a minimum, banks or credit/debit card operators utilize and adhere to Visa/MasterCard’s secure payment methods and standards. BulMM Ltd.’s online store provides three online payment methods: PayPal, Moneybookers and direct debit/credit card payment. The direct debit/credit card option utilizes a virtual POS operated by Raiffeisenbank Bulgaria. Secure communication between the server hosting www.bulmm.com and the VPOS operator is achieved in a two tier process – data is signed using digital certificates (a requirement by the VPOS operator) and using solely SSL mode communication between the hosting server and VPOS operator systems (an optional step guaranteeing an extra layer of security for users of the online store).

SMS integration: BulMM LTd. collects sales data from providers. Each sale made by provider companies under contract with BulMM Ltd. has to be registered through the website. To make the system more accessible sales can be registered using short text messages (SMS messages). This option is mainly targeted at providers who lack direct internet access at the point of sale, like warehouses, rent-a-car agents, etc. Example: A customers purchases a piece of furniture. The cashier at the show room is obliged to register the purchase. One way of doing this is by sending a short text (SMS) message, with a predefined keyword, client’s username and purchase amount, to a special 4-digit local cell phone number. If the specified username is registered and the format of the SMS message is correct, the cashier receives a confirmation text (SMS) message. On the contrary, if the cashier sends a malformatted or invalid message (i.e. not containing keyword, username, amount), he or she receives a notification text messages concerning the error.

Video upload and conversion: providers listed in the website can purchase extras. One of these extras is video advertising. The media player used is Agriya’s FLV Elite Player. Video conversion is completely automated using industry standard tools (flvtool2, mencoder and ffmpeg). Conversion is triggered upon upload completion through psexec executed as an external command in PHP to enable the user uploading the video to not have to wait for the conversion process to complete before being able to continue browsing the website.
Due to the fact that videos in avi, mpeg, wmv formats are usually substantial in size, video upload is done using Uber Uploader 6. Providers uploading advertisement clips see upload indicators for current upload speed, bytes left, bytes transferred as well as a visual progress bar, gauges impossible to put on screen relying solely on server-side programming.