Sri Lanka to connect Colombo Tea auction’s brokers and buyers through a mobile platform with live feeds

Mar 26, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka to connect tea brokers and buyers, providing a mobile based live feed that delivers real-time information directly to tea buyers, by pushing sale information that is captured by tea brokers at each auction room, a media release said. The newly launched “mAuction”, a mobile solution for the Colombo Tea Auction is said to be the first of its kind in the country which delivers real time information and facilitate both pre and post auction processes using state of the art mobile technologies and devices. The application was developed by the Mobitel Business Solutions, a subsidiary of Mobitel jointly with John Keels launched Tuesday. “It provides a good example of how contemporary technologies can be aligned to deliver unparalleled efficiencies to an industry that prides its success on conventional means and deeply enriched traditions that makes Ceylon Tea a global product par excellence,” the statement said. The release said, the new platform will enhance process efficiencies and reduce turn-around time with regards to the transparent flow of data for greater productivity. “As a platform, it provides an appropriate channel to deliver the right information at the right time, in the right form using any device to the right people, supporting contextually aware predictive modelling and analysis to disseminate information in a multi-stakeholder environment, comprising all principal industry stakeholders – tea brokers, buyers and producers.’ The statement said. “We saw an opportunity to innovate in an industry that has national significance – the uniqueness of this concept is that it ekes out linkages between multiple industry specific processes and a plethora of technologies,” Hisham Nazeem, head of Business Solutions for John Keells PLC and Head of IT Governance Risk &Compliance said. Chamith Hettiarachchi, head of Business Solutions for Mobitel (Pvt) Ltd, added “combining our agile technical skills together with the strength of Mobitel, provided the impetus to productize the concept given by John Keells PLC, to build the application portfolio taking into consideration, the versatility of open technologies that has the capability to integrate with any system varying from legacy applications to emerging technology based applications.”