Challenge Overview
1. Project Overview
Hestia War Room Overview
Hestia is a large company working in the area of building supply and construction products. They sell a lot of various products. The business area relevant to this application is selling steel pipes on the commodity market. Products are steel pipes, which can be very different in their types, sizes and characteristics. The customer sells those products within the USA through their branches. The country is geographically divided between several branches, and actual sales are performed through Distribution Centers (DC's) of those branches. It means the customer has a wide distribution network over the country, so they can sell and deliver the same products from various geographical places. The product price will vary significantly on the geographical locations of the branch and vendors producing those products.
The main goal of this project is to deliver an efficient solution for centralized calculation of pipe prices data through a modern, convenient, reliable and user-friendly application. Optimal prices have to be calculated, easily visualized to the user, and integrated with actual purchases through the existing legacy system. Part of this project will be high flexibility, with the ability to manually adjust or replace price data, perform data searching, and special analytics - i.e. ad-hoc queries on market quotes for determining sales opportunities and possibilities according to the buyers' requests.
2. Competition Task Overview
2.1 General UI Tips
- Category/Product Code/Description/Vendor/Type and Market/Branch (the latter two are on every page other than input pricing) will be on every page and thus omitted from this documentation.
- On any page where an cell a modification is in effect (look for "or original" in the text below), the font should be in red and there should be a tooltip when user hovers over that cell, in which the Start Date, End Date, User, Comment and Original Value will be displayed.
- On any page where an adjustment is in effect (look for "or nothing" in the text below), there should be a tooltip when user hovers over that cell, in which the Start Date, End Date, User, Comment will be displayed.
- All edits will go into input boxes (look for "new entry" in the text below). Remove any use of red background/red fonts from the pages other than the usage pattern to demonstrate a saved modification.
2.2 Search
Search will return one row per pricing record (product + ship point) per branch. If user chooses to only see the lowest, then for each product and branch in question we retain only the ship point that results in lowest net price for the said product and branch. If multiple ship points share the same lowest then use the ship points that comes first alphabetically. If user chooses to see all, then the lowest meeting the criteria above are highlighted in a yellow background.
CFT Products
- List (CFT) - user entry, or original
- Multiplier - user entry, or original
- Net - computed
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed
PPT Products
- List (PPT) - user entry, or original
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed
2.3 Input Prices
A new input price record is tied to an original pricing record.
CFT Product
- Current CFT - existing user entry, or original
- Current Multiplier - existing user entry, or original
- Current Net - computed
- New CFT - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry, but will not overwrite original
- New Multiplier - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry, but will not overwrite original
- New Net - computed, affected by New CFT/Multiplier entered; remains empty if nothing entered
PPT Products
- Current PPT - existing user entry, or original
- New PPT - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry, but will not overwrite original
2.4 Adjustments
An adjustment record is tied to an original pricing record + branch combination. This needs to be updated right now it is only tied to an original pricing record.
CFT Products
- List (CFT) - user entry, or original
- Multiplier - user entry, or original
- Net - computed
- (Current) Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- New Adjustment - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry
- Price before Freight - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
We need to update calculation to apply this adjustment to the multiplier to the CFT products.
PPT Products
- List (PPT) - user entry, or original
- (Current) Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- New Adjustment - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry
- Price before Freight - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Adjustment entered
We need to update calculation to apply this adjustment to the list price to the PPT products.
2.5 Freight
A new freight record is tied to an original pricing record + branch combination. Notice it does not affect other products etc. from the same vendor.
CFT Products
- List (CFT) - user entry, or original
- Multiplier - user entry, or original
- Net - computed
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- (Current) Freight - user entry, or original
- New Freight - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry, but will not overwrite original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Freight entered
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Freight entered
PPT Products
- List (PPT) - user entry, or original
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- (Current) Freight - user entry, or original
- New Freight - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry, but will not overwrite original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Freight entered
- Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Freight entered
2.6 Branch Overrides
A branch override record is tied to an original pricing record + branch combination.
CFT Products
- List (CFT) - user entry, or original
- Multiplier - user entry, or original
- Net - computed
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Freight entered
- (Current) Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- New Branch Override - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Branch Override entered
PPT Products
- List (PPT) - user entry, or original
- Adjustment - user entry, or nothing
- Price before Freight - computed
- Freight - user entry, or original
- Total Pricing - computed, affected by New Freight entered
- (Current) Branch Override - user entry, or nothing
- New Branch Override - new entry, will overwrite an existing user entry
- Net Price - computed, affected by New Branch Override entered
3. Testing
Verification Steps should be provided in deployment guide.
4. Documents
ARS: http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/download/attachments/104268156/Hestia_War_Room_Specification.zip
Architecture: http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/pages/viewpageattachments.action?pageId=96175053
Updated UI Prototype: https://coder.topcoder.com/tcs/clients/hestia/applications/WarRoom/trunk/prototype
Existing Code: https://coder.topcoder.com/tcs/clients/hestia/applications/WarRoom/trunk/code
Final Submission Guidelines
N/A