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Monthly Archives: April 2016

  • April 28, 2016
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Ecommerce trends in the UAE and rest of the Middle East

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

A sure sign of the immense potential of the ecommerce market in a region is when payment gateway companies flock to the region, working hard to document the scope and attract ecommerce players to the region.

So we have MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, all presenting reports on the state of ecommerce in the Middle East.

It’s not surprising though. The Middle East is well known for having one of the highest global per capital internet penetration.

MasterCard has been conducting its Online Shopping Behavior Study annually in the Middle East. Over the past three surveys, it has noted a steady increase in the number of internet users who have shopped online:

online-shopping-report-middleeast

The growth of ecommerce and m-commerce in the Middle East

A study by Payfort, a Middle East payment gateway, valued the region’s ecommerce market value at $7 billion in 2014, and estimates it will touch $13.4 billion by 2020.

Mobile commerce in the Middle East is predicted to play a significant role in this growth-according to MasterCard, the percent of mobile and general internet users making online purchases ranges greatly, from 37% in Oman to a high of 95% in Kuwait.

This disparity is predicted to level out in the near future as the availability of technology grows. Ronaldo Mouchawar, CEO of Souq.com, the Arab world’s largest multivendor ecommerce platform, says the mobile is the biggest platform for most ecommerce merchant sales in the region.

In the Payfort study, released in early 2015, Mouchawar was quoted: “In many online shopping categories, such as fashion, mobile sales are already higher than web-based transactions, and by the end of 2015 we expect mobile to completely overtake web.”

The challenges: What’s been holding back the Middle East ecommerce market from developing so far?

“The No. 1 challenge has always been the last mile of logistics,” says Chris Schroeder, an investor and author of a book on entrepreneurship in the Middle East. Souq.com’s Mouchawar too acknowledges the challenges in delivering to areas without a dependable mail service or, sometimes, even a proper address system to speak of.

And according to Payfort’s State of Payments 2015 study, the biggest problem cited by merchants surveyed was capturing market share, followed by delivery.

But Habib Haddad, CEO of Wamda, a Dubai-based organization that supports entrepreneurs through research, accelerator programs and events, has been quoted saying, “I think there is a lot of room for many players. I don’t think they are obsessed about competitors at this point. And I don’t think they should be,” he said. “They need to be obsessed about the customer.”

Role of Ecommerce Technology and an Ecommerce Consultant

A good shopping experience is a compelling factor in attracting and retaining customers at a webstore. To deliver such an experience, your web-store should be equipped with user-friendly features, streamlined workflow and fulfillment processes.

This feature implementation and backend integrations with ERP, CRM and other systems require in-depth technology expertise. It also requires extensive project experience with popular ecommerce platforms like SAP hybris and Magento/Magento 2.0 platforms. Thus, only an experienced and trustworthy technology vendor should be appointed, allowing the management to focus on core business activities without having to worry about the technology implementation.

Embitel Technologies, HQ in Bangalore, India, has successfully partnered with some of the leading brands of the Middle East to help them achieve their business goals:

“We’ve gained experience in fulfilling the unique requirements of businesses in this region,” says Ranjeev Kumar, Senior Business Development Manager (Ecommerce) at Embitel.

Whether it is developing a site in the Arabic script or integration of a local payment gateway and logistics partners such as Payfort or Hyperpay, Embitel offers ecommerce solutions customized to the needs of businesses in the Middle-East region.

To know more or partner with Embitel, as your Ecommerce Consultant, for ecommerce technology implementations in the Middle East, write to sales@embitel.com

  • April 25, 2016
  • 0

Understanding groupthink: The perils of too much agreement

Category : ecommerce-insights

How important is it for your team to be cohesive? Very important, of course. This unanimity helps in swift and efficient decision making, leading to greater progress.

I always believed in this obvious idea until I read about the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster.

Many will remember this horrific incident – the shuttle breaking apart in smoke and flames mere seconds after takeoff, killing the seven members on board.

Years of investigation and analysis have revealed that a compelling reason for the technical mishap was the faulty decision-making process followed in the run-up to the Challenger shuttle launch. The team behind the launch inadvertently enacted an instance of groupthink.

Groupthink is explained by the pioneer of the term Irving L. Janis, a Yale psychologist, as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”

So the decision makers on the Challenger project ignored early warnings regarding safety which were never brought up again as they operated with a sense of invulnerability. They worked so closely that even if somebody had a doubt, he/she was not willing to challenge the decision to launch and this created the illusion of unanimous agreement.

I’ve found that groupthink is pervasive in professional interaction, especially when the top management has failed to respond to the challenges of changing market conditions. Team players tend to have such confidence in their group’s decision that they are unlikely to raise any doubt about these actions. Thus each member does not believe in his/her own thinking and conforms to the group decision.

 

This could be for two reasons:

  • Fierce loyalty to each other that could lead to ignorance of a piece of information crucial to decision making.
  • A strong leader voicing his or her opinion in the initial stages, causing the opinion of the whole to team to move in that direction.

 

Beating the groupthink tendency

In my professional interactions at Embitel and even otherwise, I make a conscious effort to prevent groupthink from creeping in. Indeed, there are ways to reduce the likelihood of groupthink.

One way is to avoid making a final decision during the first meeting, and then convene a second one to clear lingering doubts and decide.

In cases when the team tends to concur with the leader, the leader can voice his/her opinion after everybody else has had a chance. Or, to avoid any domination, leaders can be appointed on rotation.

I often play the devil’s advocate, dissenting, arguing and encouraging the voicing of doubts and the consideration of all alternatives.

On occasion, when I find the decision has been taken too quickly without any debate, I call for a second meeting.

Preventing groupthink calls for encouraging argument, but not at the cost of cohesion. It is necessary to rebuild the rapport after the decision has been made and the air is less charged, and reestablish that the team is working towards the same goal.

Sharad Bairathi is a Managing Director at Embitel Technologies

  • April 20, 2016
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What is Car HUD system? Learn about all the critical hardware modules

Category : Embedded Blog

Embitel’s Product engineering services team has been hard at work perfecting their exciting new offering-the car HUD (head up display).

The HUD is a multimedia device projecting real-time data that’s critical for the driver in the context of concurrent driving conditions. All this information is displayed on the windshield or a combiner to mitigate driver distraction and offer safety and convenience.

Our Embedded Product Development team, the brains behind this project, helped us understand the following critical hardware modules of the car HUD system.

car-hud-hardware-components

Freescale/NXP i.MX 6 platform

Designed for new-age smart automotive applications, i.MX 6 processors have stood the test of time.

For our Embedded Product Development team, having already delivered an Infotainment project for a Tier-I supplier (for commercial vehicles), i.MX 6 was an obvious choice for the car HUD project.

The i.MX 6 platform, based on ARM Cortex architecture, supports connectivity, real-time data delivery, digital instrumentation, audio and multi-stream video. All these are the essential ingredients required to develop car HUD and infotainment features.

Memory chip specifications

It comes with DDR3 RAM of 1GB, which is optimum for most purposes, and is expandable to 4GB.The flash memory is 8GB, expandable to 32GB, and is used for the Android OS and BSP.

Pico projector

With the help of the Texas Instruments (TI) pico projector, the RGB data from the i.MX6 chip is converted to DLP, allowing for data to be displayed at a resolution of 854×480.

Voice recognition module

This consists of an audio codec (encoder-decoder) and allows input from the mic in the form of voice commands.

It also has a speaker module for the voice output.

Gesture Control Module

The infrared (IR) camera or a gesture recognition sensor enables one of the most innovative features of the HUD: gesture recognition. A simple swipe of the hand and HUD obeys your command.

Bluetooth and WiFi modules

Connectivity of other devices (mobile devices, V2X, V2V) with the HUD is facilitated by Bluetooth and Wifi modules.

With Bluetooth, you can connect your cellphone to the HUD, to access media files for playing music, make/receive phone calls and view messages.

With the voice recognition and gesture control features, the driver enjoys a state-of-the-art touchless experience!

The Wifi module is used to connect with the two blind spot cameras-on the right and left side-and the reverse camera that provide a view of the surroundings and obstructions in the while steering the vehicle.

GSM and GPS modules

The HUD also houses a GSM module for a SIM card, which supports data connectivity.The GPS module provides location data for all the location-based end-user features of the car HUD.

OBD Port

All the important vehicle information (battery management, speed, ignition, reverse/side indications and CAB data) is fetched by the car HUD through OBD port.

The OBD port supports feature like virtual gauges and the 3 cameras for enhanced vehicle steering and navigation.

 

    What is a pico projector?

    Pico Projectors, also known as handheld projectors, are companion products for portable devices such as cameras, mobile phones and tablets, and provide a convenient way to quickly project the content of these devices onto any surface.

    Source: projectorcentral.com

  • April 18, 2016
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Marketplace implementation on Magento 1.9 for Medfirst India

Category : B2B & Sports , Digital Commerce , Home Commerce Case

As India’s first online marketplace for hospital equipment, clinical and patient care equipment, MedfirstIndia.com promises world-class quality and service.

Leading brands such as Littmann 3M, Omron Healthcare and Dr Med have been brought on board and the team behind Medfirst entrusted Embitel with the intensive task of implementing the technology for their marketplace business strategy.

 

magento-1-9-implementation-medfirstindia

Business challenge:

Medfirst India was already operating as an online retailer, selling their in-house brand hospital and patient care products online. A change in strategy meant shifting to the relatively complex multi-vendor marketplace model, hosting products from various brands for sale.

The Medfirst team was on the lookout for an ecommerce technology partner to provide them with ecommerce business consulting and Magento Marketplace implementation.

 

Embitel solution:

  • Intensive business and technology consulting workshops were conducted with the Medfirst India team to gain a thorough understanding of their business model and operations
  • The website was upgraded to the then-latest version – Magento 1.9
  • Customization and implementation of the Medma Magento Marketplace plug-in to support multivendor features
  • Customization and implementation of separate order flows to support cash on delivery (COD) and online payment features
  • Implementation of multiple payment gateways to facilitate sale – HDFC, InstaMojo, PayUMoney
  • Customization of Shiprocket interface to support the fulfillment and shipping processes of Medfirst
  • Implementation of Service Availability Check interface for sellers – enables seller to pre-select the area pincodes where they want to deliver and provide COD
  • Customized payment settlement reporting to enable Medfirst to manage vendor payments, commissions and tax calculations

 

Embitel impact:

Successful implementation of the marketplace model to make medical supplies from various brands available on this pioneering webstore.

 

    What is Medma Magento Marketplace?

    A module to help you convert your Magento store to a multivendor marketplace, Medma offers features such as a separate vendor management area and the ability to add reviews and feedback for vendors in the marketplace.

    Source: Medma.net

    What is Shiprocket?

    A logistics software, Shiprocket offers automated shipping solutions, allowing online sellers to ship their products anywhere in the world.

    Adapted from Shiprocket.in

  • April 15, 2016
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How to build a successful mobile app-based business on Magento

Category : ecommerce-insights

 

magento-mobile-app

SayFix is a hyperlocal home upkeep services provider that makes its services available to customers through an Android app, and recently also through online and phone booking. When SayFix chose Embitel as their technology partner, both the teams had one goal: to disrupt this niche segment.

Since the launch of the SayFix app in October 2015, the numbers speak for themselves.

  • Over 7000 app downloads
  • Over 12000 customers
  • over 90% returning customers.

What can an aspiring internet business learn from this success story of building an app-based service model?

Nandkishore, VP-Marketing for SayFix, shares valuable learnings with Embitel Technologies.

SayFix is a tech-based platform connecting service-seekers and service-providers. What role does technology play in your business operations? How will it help you achieve your future business goals?

At SayFix, we are diminishing the gap between the service seeker and the service provider via technology that has the potential to help us reach customers across miles with just a click of a button.

The main problems faced by our service-seekers is their lack of time to get work done on their own, lack of credibility, no accountability, exorbitant prices quoted by vendors and few options or alternatives. On the other hand, the problems faced by service providers revolve around no assured business and underutilized capacity.

So we’ve developed a simple user-friendly technology platform that acts like a hub where service seekers and service providers meet. With this cutting-edge user platform, we are able to carry out operations ensuring quality service and prompt delivery, every single day.

In the future, we aim to make SayFix the first choice provider for such services throughout India. The role that technology is going to play in achieving this cannot be taken for granted. If we were to take that technology away, everything that we are today would come to a standstill. Our next scale of operation to reach this goal is definitely going to be heavily influenced by technology.

SayFix has an Android app built on Magento platform. What prompted you to choose Android and Magento? What features of the platform have been useful for the specific requirements of your business?

At SayFix, our main goal is to offer home upkeep solutions to as many people as possible. Since Android is a widely used platform, it is definitely worthwhile for us to choose it. It also offers ease-of-use, easy downloads and is cost-effective.

But we’ve evolved to an approach that’s ‘app-centric’ rather than ‘app-only’, allowing us to lay emphasis on our website too and knock on the doors of customers who don’t have Android phones.

Our goal is to be at the top in the service ecommerce industry, we wanted to create a unique yet effortless experience for our customers, similar to shopping from giants like Flipkart or Amazon. We studied the collaborative ecommerce and service ecommerce industries, and we then chose Magento. It’s quite popular already among top ecommerce players, so we were assured of its stability and effectiveness.

There are several advantages to Magento that we’ve been able to tap.

  • It’s flexible. We have been able to adjust the entire system according to the services we’re selling. Even as we go ahead, we can manage or reset attributes without changing the admin panel.
  • All the vital features required to operate are already integrated, such as user accounts, a shopping cart, management of the offerings, and management of transactions. This also makes it cost effective.
  • Magento also has a great responsive front-end design. This makes all the difference when it comes to UX, and we’ve had the ability to tailor this to our needs.
  • Another function we’ve found very useful is the ability to watch and control the entire system. We are able to collect a large amount of useful data about customers such as their likes and browsing behavior. The Magneto support tools also provide a comprehensive report on the app’s usage and performance and factors that cause malfunctions.

What are the challenges you faced during tech development? How did Embitel as your technology partner help you overcome these and achieve your goals?

The entire integration process was initially very time- and energy-consuming. It was a gigantic task with many challenges in development but, having an exclusive and dedicated tech team from Embitel, we were able to overcome the problems without much hassle.

Whether it was about designing the customer’s purchase journey from end to end, or incorporating innovative features that we at SayFix had set our heart on, Embitel has helped us raise the quality of the UX immensely.

In terms of tech expertise, Embitel has helped us lay a solid technology foundation for our business and has assisted us in deciding our next course of action and enhancements.

Based on your experience, please share dos and don’ts for other online businesses regarding successful development and launch of an app.

Through our app development journey we have constantly fixed glitches and have added features to enhance user experience. Having a visually-engaging experience that’s as easy as an in-store one is crucial. Here are some dos and don’ts to be mindful of while developing an app:

Dos
  • Always understand the customer and his journey. Take pains to learn why and how a customer will discover your app, how a service is selected and how a purchase is made, before you begin your development phase.
  • Remember to remain consistent while developing and adding features. Pay attention to detail. Ensure that the flow remains similar for purchase of different products or services. Upgrade regularly with newer features.
  • Simple and light, yet beautiful, should work to overcome a slow internet connection, and ensure your app doesn’t occupy much space on the phone. The overall design should be pleasing enough to install and retain.
  • The design should facilitate ease-of-use and intuitiveness. The flow of information and content should be logical.
Don’ts
  • Never rush the design. Spend ample time on design in order to get the best user experience.
  • Don’t wait for the perfect version. Develop the minimum viable product, go live and keep adding features. Start with basic features and keep updating instead. Remember, a perfect product is an obsolete product.

 

What is Magento Android App SDK?

    The Magento Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) for Android includes a library of Android resources to make it faster and easier to create a full-featured Magento mobile application. It also offers a sample application that can be customized by merchants to accelerate development. With this SDK, Magento partners can more easily create Android applications to help grow their mobile sales.

    Adapted from Magento.com

  • April 12, 2016
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Magento 2 v/s Magento 1.X benchmark tests: Results reveal why magento 2 migration is a good idea

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

When Magento Commerce announced Magento 2 platform with much fanfare, the question asked everywhere was obvious – is it really so much better?

So the brand decided to put the new platform to test. It compared the performance of Magento 2 against Magento 1.14.2 on several parameters. The results speak for themselves.

 

Magento 2 features

Magento Commerce promises faster, easier and cost effective development. A modern architecture with great flexibility and scalability and ease of customization, Magento backs these claims with the support of the following features:

On the client side:

  • a layered architecture with four tiers that are optimized for performance and scalability. Different components can be scaled independently to meet the requirements of different business use cases and different loads onthe system.
  • improvement in page response and load times by improving the way the application interacts with the browser as well as reduces the amount ofdata that must be returned from the server to render web pages.
  • Magento 2.0 maximizes the usage of the browser cache for storing assets, thus minimizing the amount of content that needs to be downloaded to render any subsequent page.
  • Improvement of response time by using asynchronous processing during checkoutand cart operations.
  • extensive use of caching of page content and static assets on the server to accelerate response times.

On the server side:

  • optional asynchronous updates for ordermanagement and product data to make concurrent operations efficient and to eliminate gridlock orblocking operations during updates, when multiple Admin users are working simultaneously.
  • job queue-based on Rabbit MQ, which allows for asynchronous processing of jobs, and improved scalability
  • tuning andoptimization of the databases to better handle high traffic and transaction volumes
  • the ability to use different databases for different sub-systems or areas ofthe application, thus allowing for different functionalareas to be scaled independently depending on the system load and unique needs of the business

 

Magento 2 v/s Magento 1.x: The results

Magento 1.14.2 and Magento 2 were pitted against each other and the upgrade came out tops in case for both small as well as large businesses. The following situations were played out:

  • Catalog browsing
  • Adding both a simple and configurable product to the cart
  • Completing the full checkout process (all steps) as a customer

heads-up-display

Throughput, or the ability to process orders per hour. A significant increase for Magento 2.


magento-2-update

Catalog browsing is much faster with Magento 2 thanks to nearly instant responses for cached content and faster generation of new pages in case of a cache miss.


magento-2-update

Server response time when adding products to cart


Product to cart

A comparison of the consolidated server response time for all steps of the checkout process.

The verdict is evident: Magento 2.0 wins hands down. It

  • Processes up to 39% more orders per hour
  • Delivers nearly instant server response times for catalog browsing
  • Enables up to 66% faster add-to-cart server response times
  • Provides up to 51% faster end-to-end checkout times

In conclusion, Magento 2.0 is a highly efficient ecommerce platform that performs better at scale compared to previous Magento versions.

It’s marked performance and scalability, combined with new functionality, powerful business user tools, and unprecedented flexibility to create tailored shopping experiences make it the next generation solution that is right for your business.

To understand more about Magento 2.0 performance and scalability enhancements, recommended product configurations, and benchmark tests, get your copy of the whitepaper “Magento 2.0 Site Performance and Scalability Optimizations” in your inbox now.

 

What is Magento 2.0?

    Magento 2.0 is a next generation open source digital commerce platform developed by Magento Commerce (an eBay Company).This new platform empowers B2C and B2B businesses to quickly and cost-effectively deliver engaging omnichannel shopping experiences.Magento 2.0 also offers enhanced performance and scalability, new features to boost conversion rates, and business agility and productivity improvements.

    Source : Magento[dot]com

Need help with Magento 2 migration? Visit our Magento 2 Migration insight page to learn the step-by-step guide on migration.

  • April 6, 2016
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Magento stores dominate Alexa ecommerce site listing

Category : Digital Commerce & Experience Blog

Magento’s success as an ecommerce platform is official !

 

Source: aheadWorks

 

In a recent study of the list of Alexa top 1 million websites, Magento platform stores comprise the largest chunk of ecommerce websites.Alexa, the information analytics giant, provides a list of the top 1 million websites based on traffic.

Ecommerce extensions provider aheadWorks studied the list issued in March to narrow down to the ecommerce websites. In its analysis, aheadWorks found that Magento stores constitute 29.1% – the largest share – of the ecommerce stores on this list!

It’s not all that surprising really, when you consider the versatility of this enterprise-class platform.It’s stable, versatile and offers great scope for customization.

What’s interesting though is that not even a year since its general release, Magento 2 stores from various parts of the world feature on this list too.Magento 2 makes development much more efficient and faster, but this study proves it delivers on performance front too.

As a Magento Silver Partner and a Magento 2 Trained Solution Partner, Embitel has put the amazing potential of this platform to practical use.

“We’ll be present at the Magento Imagine Commerce 2016 in Las Vegas too,” says Ranjeev Kumar, Senior Business Development Manager (Magento) at Embitel.”At this event, we’re keen to understand what customers expect of Magento 2 and deliver accordingly.”


magento-silver-partner

Embitel Technologies, a digital commerce agency based out of Bangalore, India, is a Magento Silver Solution Partner and Magento 2 Trained Solution Partner.

What is Magento?

Magento is an ecommerce platform built on open source technology which provides online merchants with a flexible shopping cart system, as well as control over the look, content and functionality of their online store. Magento offers powerful marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and catalog-management tools.

  • April 6, 2016
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Redesigning existing Magento customizations and Digital Marketing Services for DelightFoods.com

Category : Digital Commerce , Home Commerce Case , Others

Delightfoods[dot]com, built on Magento 1.9 Community Edition, is a marketplace for regional Indian food products – Sweets, Snacks, Bakery items, staples, pickles, masalas.

The founding team of Delight Foods built this Magento marketplace as an online sales channel with the vision of delivering delight to their customers in the form of authentic and popular foods from a specific region. But the team faced execution challenges at an early stage due to bugs in the implementation of Magento customizations.

So the Delight Foods team sought a trusted Magento partner to resolve these problems and find ways to boost web-store traffic and transactions.

They believed Embitel could help them achieve these goals.

Business challenge:

Some of the technology-related challenges to be tackled were:

  • Basic functionalities needed bug fixes and did not cater to all the use-cases
  • The web-store faced performance issues – website rendering and server level issues
  • Coding standards were not followed and the team faced critical issues with inaccurate tax calculations and payment gateway functionalities
  • Order Fulfillment System (OFS) was not implemented. This led to operational challenges as fulfillment was a manual process
    Delight Foods also needed Digital Marketing services to improve SEO and web-store traffic for enhanced market reach
Embitel Solution:

To identify where the problems lay, a web-store audit and technology workshops were conducted. This helped us understand, analyze and plan a roadmap for resolution.

  • Coding standards were implemented based on our propriety Magento Extended (ME) DevOps framework
  • Feature and functionality-related bug fixes and rigorous testing ensured all use-cases were catered to. Tax calculation issue was resolved
  • OFS module was implemented to automate the fulfillment ops – Orders received are now sent to Vendor Brands (Brand Module) through automated email system, the warehouse team (Branch Module) tracks the fulfillment and updates the status regularly in the system
  • Web-site and server level performance issues were resolved to enhance customer shopping experience and reduce cart abandonments
  • ‘Refer a friend’ feature was implemented to boost customer engagement
  • Payment gateway issue of customer log-out after payments was identified and resolved

To aid traffic and sales growth, Embitel also provided Digital Marketing services to Delight Foods.

  • Completed web-site Audit for SEO – On-page Audit, Domain Audit, Back-links, Sitemap, Crawl errors and more
  • Digital Marketing set-up by integrating tools like AdRoll, Adwords and Google Analystics
  • Enhanced Ecommerce implementation using Google Tag-manager
  • Competitor Analysis, Keywords Analysis and identification, Social Media plug-ins integration, On-page and Off-page SEO
Emibtel Impact:
  • Number of transactions on Web-store increased by 10x
  • Improved customer experience due to bug-free and optimized website performance
  • Improved fulfillment efficiency due to process automation
  • Increase in web-store traffic due to enhanced SEO

Embitel Technologies is a Magento Silver Partner and Magento 2.0 Trained Solution Partner


magento-silver-partner

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