Client Profile (Under NDA)
The client was US based business enterprise dealing in high tech innovative solutions. More than 10 years of experience of client in quality management and increased efficiency in handling vehicle OEM and aftermarket has proved to be a benchmark for the global leaders. It comprises of the experts from different fields such as information technology, transportation, mechanical engineering, industrial OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing), MRO (Manufacturing and Repair Operations), distribution, manufacturing, supply, logistics and retail sectors.
The Vision
To get the best and fastest custom search result for vehicle parts its supplier, alternatives and availability.
Application Overview
e-Zest has developed a search engine for the vehicle parts to get the information regarding part details, manufacturer, description, category etc. It also helps in getting the best alternate solutions for parts. The search engine also gives the best results for the contact details of the local sellers and map for easy access to local store locations. The advertisements module was an additional enhancement for it.
Key features of the search engine are:
- Fastest search for vehicle parts
- Local seller information with map locations
- VMRS code (Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standard) and classification
- Alternate parts (premium feature available for subscribed users)
- Comparison chart (premium feature available for subscribed users)
- More than 9 million parts database
- Customized solution based on Part Search technology to existing clients
Technologies and Tools
Technology used:
- MySQL
- PHP
- HTML5
- jQuery
- Apache
Tools used:
- Zend Framework
- Hosting: Amazon Web Services (Cloud platform)
- Apache Solr for blazing fast search response
We used Solr because it is an open source enterprise platform from Apache Lucene written in Java and runs as a stand-alone full text search engine that can be deployed with high query volume situations. It has more advantageous features as compared to other search servers.
Challenges and Solutions
Since the vehicle parts industry was completely unorganized and data handling was a big challenge that industry was facing. So as to meet the growing customer requirements and queries there was a need for a platform which could give solutions in seconds. The further challenges were as follows -
- Developing high performance system with high scalability
- Reducing time to market the product
- Result optimization with consolidated solution
We developed the customized search engine with a database for more than 9 million vehicle parts which is growing continuously. Also, it proved as the better approach for optimization of the content, internal links and effective title tags. The premium features designed specifically for automotive e-Commerce, can get the products online fast and allows the customers to find them faster.
Solution Architecture
Our technical team followed a rigorous research and development technique that could provide a customized search from a micro to macro part of vehicle based on Apache Solr. The team also developed backend logic to process alternate parts. The following diagram shows a high level architecture block diagram leading towards the optimal solutions.
Technical Breakthroughs
Our development team analyzed and studied the search servers like Sphinx and other such search solutions but later zeroed down on Apache Solr. It is an open source technology and a useful tool in the big data revolution with analyzers, indexing, and advanced search features. Solr is the popular, open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project.
Its major features include -
- Powerful full-text search
- Faceted search
- Dynamic clustering
- Database integration and data handling
- Geospatial search
Solr is highly scalable, providing distributed search and index replication, and it powers the search and navigation features of many of the world’s largest internet sites. Solr is also capable in providing with additional benefits such as -
- Optimized for high volume web traffic
- Standards Based Open Interfaces – XML, JSON and HTTP
- Comprehensive HTML administration interfaces
- Server statistics exposed over JMX for monitoring
- Scalability – Efficient replication to other Solr search servers
- Flexible and adaptable with XML configuration
- Extensible plugin architecture
Business Benefits
Managing data for huge number of vehicle parts is a tedious task. Even sophisticated system would not be efficient enough to handle such voluminous data. The search engine proved as the best solution and reflected with positive escalations in client’s business. The business benefits are -
- In–hand ready information for any vehicle parts
- Fast tapping for target market and customers
- Increased business performance
- Quality enhancements
Bottom Line
The client is able to sell this search solution to many of its customers which were dependent on manual search solution and related information of vehicle parts. The business growth resulted with multiple folds in short time.
Download a Parts Search Engine Case Study in PDF.