case studies

Point-of-Sale Software for the Mobile Environment

Mobile computing has revolutionized every aspect of the retail environment, from manufacturing to distribution to the point-of-sale. Waverley creates custom web and mobile applications that deliver measurable business success for our retailer clients. Working together, as partners, we help our clients define, create, and implement quality software that exceeds expectations. We help our clients reap the rewards of retailing in the mobile environment.

From “Old School” to “Leading Edge”

The Client

A leading manufacturer of shrink-wrapped food products distributed by their own employee sales force. Sales personnel, working out of vans and trucks, service convenience stores, mini-marts, etc. The sales person is responsible for sales and merchandising: taking orders, delivering product, setting up displays, accepting returns, and tracking all the transactions on paper, utilizing an industry-standard sales sheet.

The Challenge

Rather than recruiting and hiring in-house IT, retraining the sales force, and investing thousands in new equipment; the client engaged Waverley to design and develop an affordable electronic solution—software and hardware—that could be implemented with the existing sales force.

The Solution

Waverley created a point-of-sale system utilizing handheld PDAs, which allowed sales personnel to continue to handwrite orders directly onto an electronic tablet instead of paper. Orders input to the PDAs could be directly linked to the home server via simple modem connection. The system originally used an Apple Mac as a server (the preferred choice of the client), requiring minimal training and IT support. Ultimately, Waverley migrated from a first generation PDA to a Windows mobile environment with no downtime.

The Benefits

• Improved Ordering Accuracy
• Reduced returns caused by expiring shelf-life “use by” dates
• Sharply Reduced Data Processing Personnel
• Improved Stocking, Tracking and Inventory Control
• Elimination of Fraudulent Transactions
• Improved accuracy in production scheduling
• Very low capital investment and extreme ease of maintenance.

Making it All Work Together Better

Hundreds of retailers in the US bring their retail environment to their consumers rather than wait for the customer to come to them. You see them everyday: lunch wagons, pet groomers, automobile glass replacement, tow trucks, taxi’s, delivery services, all sorts of home repair services, and too many others to mention.

The Client

A Major Manufacturer selling merchandise through mobile retail outlets, with merchandise ranging in price from $2.00 to $10,000.00.

The Challenge

Our client engaged Waverley to create a new point-of-sale application to provide a wide range of benefits. The company’s sales organization needed this new software to:

• Increase sales by allowing users to spend more time directly with customers
• Simplify the daily retail operations
• Provide comprehensive, searchable and quick access to the complete product catalog
• Reduce administrative tasks by 50%, while improving inventory control
• Consider extensibility and future feature enhancement without breaking the user experience
• Help do a better job managing sales volume
• Provide a better understand of who is purchasing products and what they are buying
• Create a better connection with the customers
• Provide a functioning cash register regardless of whether the system is connected to the internet or not

The Solution

Waverley managers met with Sales, Management, IT and Accounting as well as with end users. Working hand-in-hand with the company’s IT team, Waverley meticulously designed unique software to meet their unique needs. Waverley created a completely new Point-of-Sale application using wireless synchronization and internet protocols. This sustained and grew the business by supporting manufacturing, supply chain, customer service, marketing, and sales productivity in their primary retail environment. The point-of-sale software is optimized to be easier to run and most importantly, to make the retailers more profitable. The new platform considers forward-looking strategies to support the business for the next two decades.

The Benefits

By giving retailers information at their fingertips, the new software reduced administrative tasks substantially, allowing them to spend 20% more time (as estimated by users) with their customers. 

Waverley successfully transitioned the development from our client’s proposed waterfall process model to the adoption of an Agile model. The Agile focus on value was a clear benefit. Short development cycles allowed the team to concentrate on high priority tasks first and get feedback from users and managers much faster than with a traditional engineering process model. By acquiring early feedback and focusing on delivering working software often, we managed to rapidly uncover and reduce risk. The Agile approach to using scope, costs, and schedule as constraints allowed the team to focus on delivering a date-driven solution of high value.

Development was very successful and the experience encouraged our client’s IT to adopt the new practices on the product across the company for appropriate projects, thereby providing more flexibility in requirements definition over time (higher customer satisfaction, lower cost), more predictable releases, and less rework.

The sales business saw increased sales, collections, productivity, throughput, and satisfaction. Processing speed and turnaround improved; improved reporting made daily activities easier and faster, allowing the sales reps to focus on their primary business.

The increased visibility of end-user and customer information and the ability to perform data mining, enabled our client to better predict sales needs and better control inventory.

Testimonial

“Disciplined development and testing that produces quality total solutions”

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