For its 112 years of existence, the International Fair – Plovdiv has gradually evolved to the definition of the “oldest, largest, most authoritative” representative of the exhibition industry in South-East Europe. Its size and rate of activity has made it the sole Bulgarian full-right member of the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI) and earned it a deserving place within other guild associations such as the Central European Fair Association (CEFA) and the Exhibition Association of South-East Europe (EASE). The Fair occupies an area of 360,000 sq.m. and houses over 24 multifunctional pavilions. Annually, the Fair hosts 52 events.
With the newly-opened Congress Centre and its eight halls, the Fair intends to become a focal point for seminars, conferences, symposia. In this way, the fair administration subscribed yet again to its motto "We create new opportunities." The redesign of its Web Site became its next step in evolution.

Business Situation

When approaching BSH, the fair administration was well aware that the existing Web Site served primarily for information and promotion purposes. And they wanted more. Eyeing online opportunities undertaken by peers, they viewed its online presence lagging in outlook and interactive communication. Further, being already an established institution with clear-cut operating procedures with regard to administration, organization of various events and relations with outside parties, the International Fair - Plovdiv was tempted to replicate at least part of its procedures to its Web Site. Procedures' automation concerned the activities of the fair, its events, available facilities. They wanted to introduce a number of efficiencies such as faster time for content upload and browsing, automated contingency between available databases and its Web data stock, better searchability and interlinkage.

“We wanted our Web Site to become a fully functional aid to our activities – a gateway for interaction and business relations with our visitors,” said Elena Vapzarova, project coordinator on behalf of the International Fair – Plovdiv. “We knew there existed possibilities to offer online registration to prospective exhibitors and we wanted to ease at least partially the multi-step application procedure.”

They knew what functionality they wanted, but did not know how to implement it. With the task of realization, the Fair turned to BSH.

Business Solution

After familiarizing with the structure and activities of the International Fair - Plovdiv, the team of BSH designers and software developers decided to concentrate on amending two basic shortcomings of the existing Web Site: the speed of content upload and the handling and linking of available Fair databases with the Web Site.

In view of the year-round agenda at its facilities, the fair needed a user-friendly Web means for promotion of its 52 events. Previously, replicating the entire event-related information load to the Web was a heavy and time-consuming process. The content, flocking from the press club and the entire administration, was voluminous and entailed a big team of writers and HTML-programmers, who continuously participated in the very process of Web page creation. Page upload needed much time and coordination. For this reason, both the technical time for writing and publication of each page and the very  coordination of activities between these two groups demanded hours before a page appeared on the site. To facilitate the process and reduce it to a single-person responsibility, BSH decided to base the new Web Site on Microsoft’s Content Management System. With this Microsoft product, the Web Site became pliable to writers with little technical skill. Now they did not need HTML-programmers to upload text, photos or attachments and the procedure of page creation was reduced to five minutes.

"By deploying the Microsoft Content Management System, our client attained a twofold increase in efficiency," Branimir Giurov, BSH CTO said. "On the one hand, it reduced its staff involved in Web Page publication to writers and on the other, the content publication procedure could be made for a fraction of the time that was necessary before."

To make sure that all information about the fair and its activities was orderly presented, BSH information architects tailored a one-to-one navigation replica to the established fair presentation practices. With such navigation, the fair aimed to avoid a potential confusion caused by discrepancies in presentation information about the fair received in paper and from the Web.

In attempt to offer further efficiencies for fair participants and ease the registration process, BSH software developers added a new functionality – Web registration forms, segregated by purpose of attendance. Now visitors, exhibitors and journalists may sign in for counted minutes.

Fair.bg needed an efficient, scalable and secure means to connect their internal Access 2000-based application with the new Content Management System. BSH development team decided to procure the safe and reliable linkage through a Web service. Thus, whenever any new information needed to be shown on the Web, the application exported it from the ACCESS Database and via open XML standards enabled its online publication. Secure data storage was guaranteed again with the use of MS SQL Server 2000 as a back-end.

The stored information now contains data about all exhibitors and assorts them by profile, contact information and area of business. By using Microsoft .NET Framework, BSH development team managed to overcome this challenge in a matter of days.

Upgrade in functionalities did not stop here. BSH took care that each participant and fair official received timely information about the item of interest they have indicated in their request. By integrating the Web project with Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, now all registered visitors, exhibitors, journalists can receive automatic confirmation of registration, notification and information about the event they have registered for.

To the fair administration, the system brought automatic processing of incoming registration forms and arrangement into the SQL server database. Additionally, the Reporting Services deliver reports about the number of registrants, segregating them by type and event they are to attend. It also generates statistics about the number of times a certain participant has registered, since when that particular visitor participates, at which events.

Knowing that connections between companies was among the primary, if not the main, purpose for participants to attend, BSH software developers supplied the Web Site with a new, yet unexplored upgrade. Now each fair participant may request an appointment with peer companies available in the fair database. In the Web form they submit, they profile the companies of their liking. The system further takes on the form, generates a search based on the specified preferences and sends an automatic invitation to all companies that fit within this profile. The procedure takes place without any manual involvement.

Benefits

• Faster and simpler content upload– With the Microsoft Content Management System, now writers may upload information by themselves and for a fraction of the time they needed before. 
• Reduced staff and paperwork – Publication needs no technical assistance from HTML-page writers. Additionally, the introduction of the Web registration procedure resulted in paper and staff cost cuts.
• Better search and reporting capabilities – The integration of Microsoft SQL Reporting Services allowed the fair administration nurture a complementary system for registration and notification. Oriented toward information stock-piling and notification of registrants and the fair administration, the system delivered enhancements in the speed and arrangement of the information database.
• Better interaction among peers; attendants and fair administration – With the new Web Site, a new type of communication between companies of the same sector was made available. With the new functionality, the Web Site became a brokerage point for companies interested not only in direct, face-to-face interaction, but also in pre and post-event interaction. By submitting a request, a company can now inform about and contact peer companies, as well as sign up for a meeting with a company of their choice. In this way, this functionality increases the means of communication by yet another one. It allows for preparation and utilization of the time spent at the event in the best way possible.