Customer Background
Our customer is a US based cigar company that offers the highest quality products
across the world. They are well known for their immense number of cigar stores
and highly ranked in number of units sold. The customer makes all blends of
cigars from strawberry to grape.
Technology Scope
The products and technologies used in this effort by our team and the customer were,
- Ionic Framework v1
- FedEx Rest API
- IBM Bluemix
- Cloudant Database (NoSQL)
- Node JS and Express JS
- Angular JS
- Android Mobile v 6.0 API 23 (For Testing APK)
The Business Challenge
Most of the times the stores have unused merchandise (cigar boxes) which need to be returned to the warehouse.
At present, when Account Executives (AE) visit the store they pick up the returns from the store and do manual paper work where they will write the SKU, quantity and store ID. They will then return the
merchandise to the warehouse on their next visit. This manual process creates numerous problems for
the business such as,
- All paperwork for the returns is manual - no digital trace
- No shipping provider being used for returns
- All returns are being done physically to the warehouse
Our Solution and Support
Miracle's Mobility Team and the customer together came up with the design for a mobile app that can be used by the stores to track all merchandise returns and ship them directly using a shipping provider.
- The app will be self-service for the store associates
- They can scan the barcode for the product SKU
- They then provide the warehouse details to return to along with shipping details and box
dimensions
- The tracking label is printed via Fedex
The Solution Architecture
The solution is built as a Hybrid Mobile Application with Ionic Framework, while the Node JS based backend is deployed on IBM Bluemix. The application also integrates with Fedex's API for shipping
goods, applying coupons and tracking packages.
Customer Benefits
The customer experienced numerous benefits through the implementation of this mobile app for their store associates including,
- The ability to track all returns and their current delivery status
- Merchandise returns no longer gets delayed because of store associates
- No more manual paperwork and also a digital trace of all returns
- Ability to analyze data for forecasting and driving sales
