Friday-Ad is the leading classified ad publication in the U.K. With a portfolio of 60 publications, over one million magazines are distributed every week. Online Friday-Ad boast an impressive 22 market leading websites serving in excess of 40 million pages per month. Their vertical channels include:
In the constantly evolving online classifieds marketplace, Friday-Ad has always been pro-active in defining new boundaries, expanding their offering to include video adverts and online auctioning. Their 'Place An Ad' product is internationally respected as one of the most sophisticated yet easy to use online ad placement e-commerce solutions.
The Business Requirement
Friday-Ad is constantly looking to improve upon their offering in order to continue supplying their customers with technologically advanced solutions and also to retain their position as market leaders.
A new search product, currently in beta stage, has recently been opened up for commercial use and Friday-Ad appointed Sigmer to undertake a consultancy project; our brief was to investigate the platform in order to assess its suitability as a commercial solution.
The Sigmer Solution
To effectively evaluate the platform Sigmer's consultants had to familiarise themselves with the intricate workings of the new platform. This consultancy, research and software development project covered a number of technical disciplines including C and Java programming, Perl scripting, UNIX commands and SOAP Web Service integration.
Specifically the project was broken down into a number of distinct tasks that the Sigmer team carried out:
-
Forge a relationship with the platform software development team
-
Review all supporting documentation
-
Assess the stability of the platform
-
Develop an end-to-end prototype proof of concept
-
Develop the working solution as specified by Friday-Ad
Once these stages were complete, Sigmer produced detailed documentation specifying:
-
How the platform works in practice
-
The levels of complexity and flexibility that the platform offers
-
What the limitations and drawbacks might be
-
Any inaccuracies in the supporting documentation
-
How the platform could be used in the future
The Result
Although the time scales of the project were tight, Sigmer overcame the challenge of working in a beta environment in a state of flux and the transatlantic time differences in order to deliver a full review for Friday-Ad on time and within budget. Our recommendations are currently with Friday-Ad for their full consideration.
Nick Taylor, Friday-Ad Technical Services Director: "Sigmer ran with the project from the outset and delivered their conclusions with minimal involvement from us, which was exactly what we wanted."
