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

Images of the application