Matrix Scientific Price Comparisons

Executive Summary

Background

            Matrix Scientific is a company based in South Carolina that buys chemicals in bulk from overseas and sells in smaller packages to research centers all throughout the United States. Matrix Scientific currently has over 100,000 different items in its inventory and competes with a handful of other companies in the market, both domestic and foreign.

Problem

            Due to the amount of items Matrix Scientific sells, employees spend many hours looking up competitor pricing on the internet to ensure Matrix Scientific is offering the lowest prices. However, this time can be better spent on other tasks throughout the warehouse.

Solution

            I wrote a system that automates the price comparison process by bringing in information from a website called discoverygate that contains the catalogs of all competing companies and informs Matrix Scientific, through color coding the spreadsheet, if they are offering the cheapest prices, as well as other bits of information. All the user needs to do is to push the “compare prices” button in the ribbon, enter the information in the prompts, and the information is readily available.

Write-up

• http://files.gove.net/shares/files/15w/austina2/ISYS_520_Final_Project.pdf

Spreadsheet/Code

• http://files.gove.net/shares/files/15w/austina2/Final_Project_VBA_Matrix.xlsm