Helium

Helium is a flexible, and powerful framework for deploying online ordering systems.

With modules specifically tailored for online publishing, Helium is ideally suited for both Internet and intranet distribution of electronic and hard copy material:

  • Online report publishing
  • Academic publishing
  • Short run publishing
  • Electronic distribution
  • Pre-printed material ordering
  • Catalogue based ordering

As a solid development framework, Helium allows for 100% customisation of appearance, workflow, and business rules.

Appearance

Unlike many ordering systems that allow you to "brand your site", Helium allows you to completely replicate the appearance of your existing site or create an entirely new identity for your online distribution point. This gives you the power to control your customer experience without the limitations imposed by most rigid online distribution systems.

Additionally, the Helium system can incorporate custom built wizards that direct your users through a specific ordering and fulfilment process, including order confirmation, signoff, and flexible payment procedures.

Helium is 100% tailored to fit your business model

Access Control

Security, user and group management tools give site administrators the flexibility to control access to specific documents, sections, and even activities.

Administrators can assign roles to individuals and teams, apply special access rights to selected staff, or create a publicly accessible section of an intranet site. The power to manage the flow and access of information gives sites exceptional control over their range of published material and greatly improves the integration of internal and externally distributed product.

Powerful Price Management

Helium's control over pricing is extremely powerful. Representing complex pricing structures such as:

  • Complex discount and mark-up structures
  • Discounting and markup based on user and group
  • Bundle pricing
  • Price breaks

Helium exhaustively analyses your shopping cart and calculates the best package available from your current selections and your specific user details. This high level of price control means sites can use Helium to distribute their products to a wide audience without the need to create different processes for special users.

Multi-Format Media Attachments

With the ability to attach multiple formats of media to each product, site managers can store all types of additional data on their product. The same system handles everything from preview images and thumbnails, all the way to production/press quality PDFs, low resolution downloadable content, or even movie and audio files.

Site managers can use Helium's rich media attachment to tailor their delivery mechanisms to each of their users.

For example:
XYZ Training delivers online training materials for both internal and external users. They provide a product preview, with attached PDF previews and short video clips. In addition, they attach various types of media to the product:

  • Low resolution PDFs for user download
  • Press-quality PDFs for production in print centres
  • High resolution video attachments for internal network users
  • Low resolution video for external users

Rich media attachments give users the ability to choose the ideal delivery method for their platform and individual requirements. Some users may prefer to pay less and receive an electronic copy of a document, while others like to lay their hands on printed work.

When combined with access control restrictions, Helium can control access to media types based on a user or group's defined roles and capabilities. This allows site managers to tailor the user experience for internal, external, and production staff.

Access control and rich media attachments also improve the quality, accuracy and turnaround time of the system. While users can access preview images and descriptive text, production staff can extract all the necessary attachments for hard copy printing. This also ensures that both users and production staff are on the same page.

Integrated Payment Options

Helium's payment framework allows for communication between the online ordering system and other external financial and billing systems. Combined with customised workflow options, the system can process transactions based on each site's business rules.

For example:
XYZ Training use the integrated payment gateway to process the credit cards of external customers. Internal customers are directed through the appropriate workflow and their purchases are authorised and committed to internal accounting systems.

Custom Integration

Helium's custom-built data connectors give each site the ability to integrate their online presence with their back end systems.

Helium is powerful and flexible, but to really make it dance it needs to fit each customer's business model like a glove.

Data interchange modules can be written to accept product details and pricing from a back end billing system, import and update user information from HR databases, or return purchase information to accounting and financial departments. This helps automate the process of managing a Helium system, reduces human error, and improves the accuracy of information displayed to the users.

The system can also interact with other purchasing systems to import orders and communicate with other business systems. Advanced B2B connectivity allows your clients to hook directly into your catalogue, and streamlines the entire ordering process.

Extendable

Most systems require at least one component to be custom built. Helium incorporates a solid plug-in development framework that allows our developers to add additional functionality to a Helium site.

By building in plug-in support at the base level, sites can incorporate custom functionality with shorter lead times and reduced costs. It also allows each customer to decide their level of customisation based on their requirements and budgets.

Internally, Pirion use Helium's plug-in architecture to develop enhancements such as variable data PDFs. Pirion's CarbonPDF plug-in creates variable data PDFs from templates and user data. Carbon has given Pirion the ability to create a wide range of ordering systems that support customised documents such as:

  • Business cards
  • With comp slips
  • Water-marked PDFs
  • Personalised PDFs
  • Cover pages

Other examples include real-time connectors for external systems, custom workflow modules, and credit-card payment gateways.

Over all, Helium provides a powerful and flexible framework for the creation of online ordering and distribution solutions. The functionality of each site is customisable and integration with existing management information systems is highly supported.