BidNetwork: An e-auction platform

❓ Negotiation is at the heart of a business’ procurement. You cannot negate the importance of this art of bargaining and getting the price to suit your budget to succeed in your business. With the advent of digital systems and e-practices in all industries, the geographical lines are slowly diminishing. You are no longer restricted towards purchasing from your country or state; you can buy goods and services from across the globe.

Negotiation has upped its game, too, in the process. With bidders joining the game from across the globe, more businesses are moving towards e-auction to help gain the right supplier for their needs.

As the word e suggests in the e-auction, this is an online bidding process. In this case, a single buying company can conduct real-time negotiations with multiple bidders/suppliers simultaneously. The process is pre-defined and structured. As all the buyers are connected and bidding, there is no need for a one-on-one discussion, thus saving the buyer’s time.

High fidelity mobile designs

Research that supports the design

1️⃣ Learning what are the procurement procedures followed in B2B space.

2️⃣ Understanding the reverse auction scenarios and bridging the demographic gap between buyers and vendors.

3️⃣ Easing the way of comparing deals and finalising the cheapest and best of them.

4️⃣ Coming up with a good onboarding and auction hosting design flow

⭐ A desk research to understand different terminologies about B2B space and procurement technology.

⭐ Talking to some friends to understand in more detail.

⭐ Come up with actionable insights and ideation.

⭐ Finalising the requirements and features.

⭐ Define the Sitemap

⭐ Convert them into screens

Business owners: All those businesses that want to buy supplies and goods from big vendors at the costs possible.

Vendors: All those vendors that want to give out goods in large quantity to companies and businesses.

The act of obtaining goods or services, typically for business purposes.

B2B Auctions connect both buyers and vendors from a global pool, while enabling them to connect and complete transactions as if they were in person. These natural advantages are hard to ignore, especially in the increasingly well-populated and competitive e-commerce markets.

Big ticket items are universally available for less through these mediums, as buyers look to invest at cost price and vendors showcase a willingness to share their savings in a bid to sell quickly and in volume.

If business owners are able to reduce purchasing costs and maintain strong profit margins, they can continue to contribute to widespread economic expansion.

Online auctions are in the form of e-contracts. E-contract is a contract constitutes, specified, executed and deployed by a software system. In an auction, call for bids act as an invitation to offer. The bids made by the persons at the auction act as offer and it is at the auctioneer’s discretion to accept or reject the offer. On acceptance, the offer turns into an agreement, where the buyer agrees to buy a certain property on payment of a certain consideration. Since all the elements of a valid contract are present, online auctions are legal contracts.

Classic bidding system.

Suppliers bid against each other.

The lowest bidder wins.

📈 Before I started the visuals, I visited the Procol website to learn more about the product and structure. Moreover I also went through the government e-auction portals.

📈 The fonts I chose for this app is Lexend which is a Google Font. It is because it gives a clean and formal vibe.

📈 iOS screens and Human Interface Guidelines are tried to be used.

📈 The colours chosen are dark blue and light blue as blue signifies trust. Here the businesses are dealing with huge tickets and money matters so blue in my opinion seemed a good to go!

📈 The app has been made from buyer’s view.

🌀 The Indian business market is still new to procurement technology and other technical ease available to them. Therefore so to support that learning curve the onboarding here has to speak more about the product and educate the users.

🌀 The onboarding process here has a small interaction of four screens which gives the user a glimpse of the features of the product in a minimal way.