Case Study

App development for customer counting and business management

Front-end Developer working on a web application

The client

 

Worten

Industry
  • Retail
  • Founded in 1996, in Portugal
  • Specialised in electronics, entertainment and home appliances
  • Over 180 stores in Portugal

Challenge

This project emerged in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the following needs arose:

  • For public safety reasons, limit the access of large crowds to the same store.
  • Allow for counting the number of people visiting the stores. With that information, stores can know which are the busiest times and how to boost their business.
  • Present various statistical information that allows stores to define marketing strategies, such as:
    • Which store has the most visitors?
    • What are the days in which a particular store has the highest number of visitors?
    • What is the most visited area of the store?
    • What age groups visit the store?

Solution

The solution involved the development of 4 major components with well-defined purposes:

  • SOAP: a service that allows capturing the data from the stores' sensors in real time. With the sensor data it is possible to know how many people entered/exited the stores, as well as other data;
  • REST API: a server that connects to the SOAP service in order to save the sensor data in the database;
  • Dashboard: a counting panel that allows you to check how many people entered and exited a given store. In practical terms, this dashboard would be in front of the store;
  • Customer application: a web application that allows access to the application's settings and various dashboards. This is where clients can configure stores, clients, panels, sensors, and have access to a set of useful information for the business analysis of the store itself.

Methodology

A combination of several Agile methodologies was used. It involved the values of Scrum and XP.


Technologies

  • SOAP: ASP.NET; SignalR
  • REST API: Java 8; Spring Boot
  • Dashboard: Angular
  • Customer application: Angular
  • Database: MySQL

Results

The uptake of the application by customers was a success. It allowed our customer to sell more sensors and install the application in several stores.

There was a significant increase in the customer's Return On Investment (ROI).


Time and resources

The project lasted 6 months. The team included:

  • Project Manager;
  • Functional Analyst;
  • 1 Fullstack Developer (ASP.NET and Java);
  • 1 Front-end Developer.

Architecture

Imagem 1

 


Images of the application

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