Joomla Extensions , Joomla Components

Overview

• allowing the Buyer to choose the best deal
• obtaining Prices for Services or Products
• Rating System
• Commissions Plugin, Pay-per-Contact Plugin, Pay-per-Bid Plugin
• including file attachement and images
• support for various types of auctions like public, private, choose winner
• eMail Notifications on major events
• Watchlist for sellers on Categories and Auctions
• pay for listing or featured Auctions
• TAGS
• CB Integration
• and many more...
  

Reverse auction is a tool used by many purchasing and supply management organizations for spend management, as part of strategic sourcing and overall supply management activities.

In a reverse auction, a buyer contracts with a market maker to help make the necessary preparations to conduct the reverse auction. This includes: finding new suppliers, training new and incumbent suppliers, organizing the auction, managing the auction event, and providing auction data to buyers to facilitate decision making.

The market maker, on behalf of the buyer, issues a request for quotation (RFQ) to purchase a particular item or group of items (called a "lot"). At the designated day and time, several suppliers, typically 5-20, log on to the auction site and will input several quotes over a 30-90 minute period. These quotes reflect the prices at which they are willing to supply the requested good or service.

Quoting performed in real-time via the Internet results in dynamic bidding. This helps achieve rapid downward price pressure that is not normally attainable using traditional static 3-quote paper-based bidding processes.

The prices that buyers obtain in the reverse auction reflect the narrow market which it created at the moment in time when the auction is held. Thus, it is possible that better value - i.e. lower prices, as well as better quality, delivery performance, technical capabilities, etc. - could be obtained from suppliers not engaged in the bidding or by other means such as collaborative cost management and joint process improvement.

The buyer may award contracts to the supplier who bid the lowest price. Or, a buyer could award contracts to suppliers who bid higher prices depending upon the buyer's specific needs with regards to quality, lead-time, capacity, or other value-adding capabilities. However, buyers frequently award contracts to incumbent (i.e. current) suppliers, even if prices are higher than the lowest bids, because the switching costs to move work to a new supplier are higher than the potential savings that can be realized. 

Description

Reverse Auction Factory comes as a new product to complete our Auction Components Suite. 

The main difference in comparison to the Auction Factory is that with the Reverse version, end-users can post their requests in order to obtain the best price for needed services or desired products. This means that they can choose the lowest price or what they consider would be the best deal for them.

The component can be used to organize auction in different fields of interest. Here just a couple of examples:

• Freelancing (developers, programmers, designers.)
• Constructions (materials, architects, interior design, pools, etc.)
• Technicians (utilities, locksmiths, plumbers, electricians, etc.)
• many other branches.

In order to provide maximum flexibility to all the administrators, Reverse Auction also uses a template engine. Detailed informations about how to personalize the Reverse Auction Extension can be found here, in the Template Tutorial. 

Requirements:

• Joomla 1.0.x or Joomla 1.5.x Legacy Mode
• CRON (a general CRON Tutorial is available in our documentation section and also a more particular one regarding How To Set up the CRON Job for Auction Factory).

Version Info

Reverse Auction Factory 1.4.1 released on December 28, 2009.

• New feature: RSS Listing
• Fixed issues regarding counting inconsistency.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.4.0 released on Octobre 21, 2009. 

• New feature: message sending added to settings.
• Improved functions like display winning bid in backend, timezone optimization, etc.
  
• Fixed several issues including payment (displaying payment form and payment type), modules displaying unpublished auctions, messaging issue on bid list replay, added job_deadline in tpl, mail cattitle, nda, acl, etc.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.9 released on May 25, 2009. 

• New feature: Gallery Plugin, Gallery settings in backend.
• New feature: New Gallery Mootool.
• Improved quicker and lighter coding; rbidsVersionCheck replaced with JOOMLA_RV_VERSION.
• Improved SEF.
• New Template available.
• Enable counter and display number of auctions for all categories modules.
• Fixed several issues including Short Open tags, watch category, tags filter with spaces search when trimmed and display results (twice), search after country and city without CB, quickButton (in J!1.0) finding JOOMLA_RV_VERSION, including file Router.php, CB date format my auctions & my watchlist, installer CB plugin Google map, short open tags at modul, ACL for J!1.5.11, plugin commission with values for verified and powerseller, users statutes, CB integration for seller and bidder, etc.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.8 released on February 4, 2009.

• New feature: Differentiated Comissions for Powersellers, verified users and regular users.
• New feature: Moneybookers Payment Method.
• New feature: Multiple Payment Gateways.
• New feature: Notification on manual payment approval.
• Set return page to thankyou page.
• Fixed issues regarding ACL (no redirecting if user details were not completed), Rating System, display payment manager, automatic set featured auctions in price plugin, reversed paypal linking emails, cb_plugins renamed, search id display, tag cloud module, installing mod rbids, installing categories module under J1.5, latest auctions module, purge auctions, cancel field database, some uninstall notes.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.7 released on December 18, 2008.

• New feature: Pay-per-Contact Plugin.
• New feature: Pay-per-Bid Plugin.
• New feature: added AutoWinner modus to the type of Auction (automatic win lowest bid).
• Fixed issues regarding date, rating, template for the mail plugin, own bid validate issue, payment button.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.5 released on November 21, 2008.

• New feature: ACL Integration (bidder, seller group).
• New feature in comission plugin: comissions depending on Currency.
• New validation JS alert on higher bid then permited (more then regular mosmsg message).
• Fixed issues regarding: comission plugin (paypal paylog), Search criterias Country and City, on Edit preserve end date, Backend payment listing issues, Auction unique number, several other issues.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.1 released on November 17, 2008.

• New Settings: NDA enabled/disabled; Main Image required (yes/no); Google map key, Allowed File Extensions, custom reverse only css for messages (.message css class).
• Navigation toolbar: back-button for backend payment methods.
• Fixed issues regarding template (displayed private instead of public, attached docs were not displayed), lowest bidded price, watchlist, missing constant in backend, search issues regarding dates and category, counter, fixed issue on republishing auctions, CB issue on my won bids tabs and my bids tabs.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.3.0 released on November 5, 2008.

• New feature: Commissions Plugin
• New feature: TAGS
• New module: TAGS Cloud (available only under J! 1.5.x)
• Fixed issues regarding CB Tab plugin, IE template, etc.

Reverse Auction Factory 1.2.0 released on October 3, 2008.

• New feature: pay for listing
  
• New feature: pay for featured auctions
• Fixed issue regarding modules installation under J!1.0

Reverse Auction Factory 1.1.0 released on September 23, 2008.

• Support for Joomla 1.5.x Legacy Mode

Reverse Auction Factory 1.0.0 released on August 28, 2008.

Screenshots

Screenshots are representing version 1.0.0 of Reverse Auction Factory.

Reviews

Customer Reviews:

Erik Folberth  (Thursday, 01 November 2007)
Rating:

Issues and Opportunities. Buyers, sellers, and market makers should adhere to auction rules and industry codes of conduct for the use of reverse auctions, if they exist. Problems arise when one or more parties fail to conform to auction rules. This can range from simple cries of "foul" to litigation.

Buyers should not assume that reverse auctions will, in every case, deliver savings - either on a unit price or total cost basis. Reverse auction savings can range from negative (i.e. it costs the buyer money) to neutral (i.e. no savings) to positive savings (average gross of 10-20%, but net savings is typically half or less).

A true representation of savings can not be achieved if unit price-focused purchasing metrics such as "purchase price variance," "purchase order variance," or "material price variance" are used. Instead, total cost savings must be calculated, inclusive of direct and indirect losses associated with using reverse actions, implementing reverse auction results, subsequent procurement activity, and related activities such as customer returns, defective goods or services, warranty expense, litigation, etc.

Suppliers are advised to determine if a value proposition exists for them that would warrant their participation.

Suppliers seeking to avoid reverse auctions can create unique intellectual property, expand the value propositions for its customers by creating new products and services, or seek to extend or improve collaborative activities with their customers.

Reverse auctions used in industrial business-to-business procurement and spend management activities remains controversial, both within buying organizations, among suppliers, and among the academics who study them. As such, buyers considering the use reverse auctions should carefully evaluate all available information, both favorable and unfavorable, to ensure that informed business decisions are made.