Campus & Co. - Superstore

Business type: Superstore
Campus and Co. is a global chain of supermarkets called Superstores. It’s a grocery store for families. It is run by a global team of volunteers, with all the profits returning to the community.

It is an e-commerce permission-based model consisting of 3 major vital stakeholders, including:

● Super Admin, referred to as Admin Dashboard (Web Application),
● Sub-Admin, referred to as Volunteer Dashboard (Web Application), and
● Customer (Mobile Application).

Client Requirements

Campus&Co. was very affirmative in his objective and told us he wanted to create a place with fair-priced groceries for families.

The client wanted to expand its store sizes, multiply locations and partner with new suppliers.

So, our team figured that the experience of families should be consistent and friendly. The transactions need to be smooth, and in no time, customers should find what they are looking for.

Here is the client's original list of needs.:

● Import of suppliers into the new system
● Development of products
● Product categories
● Inventory
● Purchases
● Customer information and orders
● The generation of barcodes and discounts
● Rudimentary analytics
● Reporting.

Project feature



Camus&Co. is a supposedly honouring organisation whose focus lies in offering the best customer experience. Also, creating a hassle-less process among the three stakeholders was our top priority.

Super Admin


The Super Admin in the system will be responsible for the roles and responsibility addition along with multiple other KRAs, create various business reports, and manage CRUD operations.

● Adding Suppliers
● Adding Products
● Adding Inventory
● Adding Stores

Sub-Admin (Volunteers)


The sub admin also volunteers will be responsible for

● Managing the store
● Renewing inventories
● Raising transfer requests for inventories
● Receiving purchase orders
● Reviewing customer details (Invoices, profile details, product information)
● Reviewing the order details
● Filtering out the sales history

Customer (End-User)


The end user will be allowed to

● Download the application from respective stores,
● Sign up or sign in
● Sort their products
● Add to the cart

followed by the checkout process using an integrated payment method.

Challenges

The challenges Campus&Co. faced were mostly regarding order and purchase. We had to make the transactions as smooth as they got. Here is a list of things that needed our prime focus:
  • Challenges 01
    The difficulty is managing and placing recurring orders for everyday essentials in an effective manner. To achieve daily requirements, this procedure necessitates collaboration with vendors and prompt purchases.
  • Challenges 02
    Integrating the XERO accounting system into the overall system is difficult. The purpose is to integrate the current system with XERO to simplify financial management, reporting, and bookkeeping operations.
  • Challenges 03
    It is critical to accurately map and synchronize multiple components such as product orders, inventories, and inspection reports. This guarantees that all important data is integrated and available for effective tracking and management.
  • Challenges 04
    The task at hand is to transfer existing data from the previous system into the newly constructed system. This entails transferring and integrating past data into the new system, such as product orders, inventory records, inspection reports, and other pertinent information.

Solutions

Our expert designers and developers worked together to develop quick-loading and responsive designs.
  • Set up an automated method to produce purchase orders (POs) for everyday essentials. This might be accomplished using a cron job that runs once every day and creates and sends POs to the selected supplier, assuring timely purchase of essential materials.
  • Create and test the integration between the existing system and XERO. This entails developing a smooth interface that enables the proper transmission of financial data between the two systems, such as invoices, transactions, and other pertinent information.
  • Ensure that all critical components, such as POs, inventory, inspection reports, and so on, are thoroughly mapped. This may be accomplished by creating a coherent system architecture that allows for precise data tracking, connecting, and retrieval across various components.
  • Create an import function within the portal to allow for the seamless transfer of past data from the old system to the newly designed one. This feature should make it easier to migrate data such as past POs, inventory records, inspection reports, and other pertinent information while maintaining data integrity and correctness.

Process

  • Empathy

    We prioritized empathy during the DreamSteps system development process in order to understand the requirements and concerns of all parties engaged, including administrators, volunteers, and customers. To get insights into their experiences and pain issues, we conducted interviews, observed, and received feedback. This aided us in developing a thorough grasp of client requirements and ensuring that our solutions efficiently met their objectives.

  • Define:

    We defined the scope and objectives of the system's modules after gathering insights and empathizing with users. We thoroughly examined the criteria and transformed them into clear and straightforward objectives. This entailed categorizing and organizing the various components in order to build a structured framework that would serve as a basis for future growth.

  • Ideate:

    With a firm grasp of the objectives and requirements, our team embarked on an ideation phase to generate prospective solutions. We promoted open and collaborative talks about different alternatives and innovative ideas for improving the user experience and streamlining procedures. During this phase, we were able to produce a variety of concepts and features that would eventually be implemented into the system.

  • Prototype

    We went on to prototyping after the brainstorming phase. We turned abstract notions into physical representations of the system's components. We offered visual and interactive representations of the user interfaces, functionality, and processes using wireframes, mockups, and interactive prototypes. We were able to tweak and improve the concept through this iterative approach before moving forward with development.

  • Test

    We did rigorous testing after the prototypes were completed to guarantee functioning, usability, and general user happiness. We enlisted the help of administrators, volunteers, and clients in user testing sessions, obtaining input and making required changes. We found areas for improvement and fine-tuned the modules to correspond with the users' expectations and requirements by analyzing their interactions and reactions.

Technologies Used

Initially, we began designing over Figma, a collaborative web application for interface design. It followed by using "HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and Bootstrap" for the front-end conversion.

After that, The most recent version of "PHP" is used for backend development.