ACS S.A. the largest courier services company in Greece saw an opportunity in developing an environment for supplying its services to e-shops, without the integration cost for each specific installation.

When the case was discussed with Technopolis S.A. an obvious solution has been implemented, which included development of an integrated Application Programming Interface (API) that every ‘e-shop’ that established a business cooperation with ACS S.A. could use for integrating all shipment-related information into its ‘Submit Order’ process.

The API includes a full-set of Web Services, implemented over standards imposed by Liferay Enterprise Portal platform, which allow e-shop clients to get ‘shipment data’ accurately and transparently from ACS S.A. back-end systems.

A bi-directional data exchange between e-shop platform and the API, implements:

• Delivery address verification
• Automated delivery cost calculation based on various parcel metrics (i.e. dimensions, weight, etc), distance, etc.
• Shipment order management (for the e-shop)
• Shipment tracking integration (for the customer through the e-shop)

Deployment of the aforementioned API, allows ACS S.A. to establish business cooperation with every e-shop company, with the flexibility to support exclusive agreements and while keeping administration cost at minimum.