General Description

The ECOSELL (Extended Collaborative Selling Chain) project was conceived with the purpose of giving response to the increasing complexity in the value chain management and is specially oriented towards business models in which players in different sectors and different business value chains propose a new jointly-designed offering to the market.

In this sense, the project focuses on the development of a framework that will improve the flows of relationships amongst the different players in complex business models. The ECOSELL project looks for improvements in the downstream value chain offering to manufacturers, services providers, raw material suppliers, semi-manufacture goods suppliers and dealers new extended relationship models, work procedures and information technologies that allow supporting this new approach of doing business.

Objectives of the Project

The main purpose of the project is to provide benefits in terms of:

• Enhanced overall competitiveness, innovation and adaptability in today and tomorrow’s enterprise partnership scenario
• Cross-country and inter-enterprise interchanges, building European networked enterprises that are supported by dynamic relationship schemas and innovative cooperation and coordination business paradigms
• Higher added-value to customers, in terms of improved value proposition and better and more accurate customer service
• Cost reduction at the intra-enterprise level (inefficiencies of processes, stocks, flows, plans, etc) based on value chain overall optimisation and synchronisation
• Human capital improved quality of work and empowerment, through better knowledge management and integration, better understanding of dynamics and flows, and clearer definition of roles and responsibilities
• Optimisation of materials, wastes and energy consumption based on more rational and homogeneous production and supply plans, stocks and workforce balance.   

To achieve these objectives, new business models and processes have to be developed between companies in the new ECOSELL model.

ECOSELL Project

ECOSELL Project began in February 2003 and lasted for 30 months until August 2005. The proposal responds to the “Promoting Competitive and Sustainable Growth” (GROWTH) programme of the European Union.

The project has three main phases:

• Solution definition – from individual and ECOSELL problems identification and analysis to Master plan specification: analysing of the existing problems and defining the specifications of the targeted business model (the ECOSELL) and the proposal of several paths to achieve it.
• Solution development – Building the extended collaborative selling chain through a process of reengineering and the construction of a common technical infrastructure.
• Solution validation - development of the prototypes and pilots, and the validation by the consortium (and especially by user partners) of the achieved results and deliverables   

Technical Architecture

ECOSELL uses as developing and execution framework the XMAP platform. XMAP was developed during the X-MOB project leaded previously by DMR within an IST European program. XMAP is standards based and it is J2EE full compliant. XMAP contributes with several benefits like the possibility of deploying applications with different legacy Partners platforms. It is based in MVC (Model, View, and Controller) pattern and this characteristic allows separating business workflow (Controller) from data access (Model) and from it representation (View).

Contribution to Customers

The ECOSELL concept will became a reality to enterprises in different sectors. It is the basis for the overall management of the downstream of the supply chain; it facilitates stock analysis and management, the management and control of exceptions in the distribution chain, a better understanding and control for the customer ordering process for product-packs. ECOSELL products are an innovative concept with high added value to customers; it will offer, in a single point of sale, an application suite with a main objective – customer satisfaction, brand acknowledgment and sales improvement.

Consortium Description

ECOSELL is the result of an elevated investment by a Consortium composed by sixteen companies from five European countries (Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and Norway) User partners are organised following two meta-value chains:

• Meta-value chain 1: Tile – Furniture – Glaze
• Meta-value chain 2: Automotive – Telemetry – Telediagnosis – Tyres   

The building up of those pilots, ensure an important coverage of a wide study cases, and a valuable variety of analysis and infrastructure results expected, that will be transferable to an important number of other European industrial sectors.

Project Background

One of the major inspirations for the development and implementation of this project is the book recently published by Marc Alba, Partner on DMR Consulting Spain and person in charge of Supply Chain Management international practice.