RESEARCH FINAL PROJECT

Develop an Application for Retailers

Action Research Paper

Jaya Kumar Pitti

Wilmington University

IST 8101

Under the guidance of

Prof. Billy Machage

Fifth Iteration: Developing and Integrating the Applications……………………………… 18

Table 1: Product Table………………………………………………………………………44

Table 2: Customer Table…………………………………………………………………… 45

Table 3: Billing Table………………………………………………………………………. 45

Develop an Application for Retailers

Introduction

Innovation is the new standard in organizations and many companies are focusing on doing their business with new standards and want to get close to their customers. To make all these innovations and move the business into a profitable way, companies need to implement new technology standards in their business process. As part of the implementation, companies are developing new applications for making their business simple. Developing an application is an easy task for the companies but developing according to their business needs is very important. Companies are even making targeted business to attract more customers and to generate more revenue to the company (Hoshin, 2016). In today’s business world, retail sector is one of the top sectors with more revenue generation but most of the companies are still in losses because of their bad business activities and improper technology implementation.

Now a days, retail companies need an application which should support their sales, marketing, customer support and analytics. Retail companies are facing lot of trouble in making their business with profits and they are finding hard to target their customers and getting business. For developing an application for retailers, first we need to analyze the business requirements and problems of the company. Once we know the problem that the company is facing in their business, we need to collect their requirements and should sort it down according to the needs (Shaohui & Fildes, 2016). An application should always be developed according to the problem, budget and time available within the hand of an organization. Once all the functional and non-functional requirements are collected, the design for the application is done and then after the design of the application, the development is performed and once the application is developed, we test for the bugs in the application. After testing the application, it is deploy onto all the user systems. There are additional business needs that will be added to the application in the maintenance phase. We also use different software development methodologies according to the company business needs and the budget. The company also uses the right methodology according to the length of the project.

There are different methodologies which are used and they are waterfall, Spiral, V-model and Agile methodology. Agile methodology will be best methodology where we can use scrum method to develop the application. In scrum we can develop the application in different iterations and in each iteration we design, develop and test the application. Each iteration will be around one month and there will be many requirements that will be added in the middle of the project. The application will evolve with the development and new features will be added (Shaohui & Fildes, 2016).

In this retail application, for the development we need various technologies and tools that are best in the industry. In the development, we need to focus on various areas of the application. We need to develop the front-end of the application that is used by the user and there will be a back-end, which is the combination of database, server and application. As this is a retail sector there are other requirements for the business. For this retail application, the company also need a analytics tool which is very important in today’s world. For developing the application we use front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, JS and for developing the back-end we use Java frameworks like Spring and Hibernate (Shaohui & Fildes, 2016). For a proper retail application there are many factors that need to considered and they are:

Data Analysis

This area completely collects all kinds of data related to business and all this data should be organized well with proper SKUs. All the sales and marketing activities should be made through the results from data analysis. This section should also provide the crash reporting of the whole enterprise software (ScienceSoft, n.d.).

E-commerce

With the develop of an retail application, all the companies should also focus on the e-commerce application which is used for doing business online (ScienceSoft, n.d.).

Loyalty Management

This is an additional feature for the retail application and through this system, we can track all the members shopping activities and this system also tracks the benefits that are given to the individual (ScienceSoft, n.d.).

Retail Software

This is the major software component in the whole business because these systems acts as a POS for billing, it also acts as a back office software for tracking all the inventory in the company (ScienceSoft, n.d.).

Addition to all the features in the application there are still more features that are required for the retail application. We need social network integration software for reaching the customers in an easy way. One other important feature of the retail software is the payment gateway, which is used for connecting to the banks and third party financial institutions. The retail application also needs a self-check out platform for making business operations simple and easy (RapidValue, 2015).

For developing this application and solving the business problem there are many software’s that are required and we need to use right analytics tools, big data software’s, right frameworks for application development, implement proper security features, design a robust database, right insights should be designed to make targeted business. Analytics is the core important thing in today’s applications because company should be able to estimate what product that a customer need and what product should be place in the retail store beside what kind of product. There are many analytics tools like SAS, Tableau, Microstrategy, Qlikview and Sisense for analyzing the data. There are many development frameworks like .NET, Java for developing the main application (Shaohui & Fildes, 2016).

As a researcher, my goal is to develop an application for retailers using all the required tools and technologies and for completing this research, I will use Action research methodology which is the best methodologies for interacting with the people who are related to same kind of industry and application development. This research will provide a solution to all the retails on how to develop an application for their business and what kind of features need to be added to their application and also what tools and technologies that need to be used.

Methodology

For this research project, I am going to use Action research methodology for doing all my research related to the business problem. As I am dealing with retail sector, I need to speak with all the retailers, application developers, data analysts, and database developers for designing a solution for the problem. In meeting all the people and to design a solution, Action research will help me in meeting all the people and to involve in active participation of the project. Action research is the best methodology because it helps us to see a problem in a high level view that makes us to consider all the different aspects of the problem and all areas of the business.

Action research is a cyclic process where the whole research is divided into different iterations and many practitioners are involved with the researcher (Joselia, 2016). In each iteration there are different steps that are involved and those include the following:

Problem Identification

The first step is to identify the main problem of the sector and then we need to define the problem in a right manner because based on identification of problem, we will find a right solution by doing proper research (Joselia, 2016).

Action Planning

In this phase, the whole plan for the iteration will be developed and all the important things that need to done in the iteration are defined in the plan. The plan also contains the information of the practitioners that the researcher is going to meet and it also contains information about the schedule and resources (Morales, 2016).

Action

The action will be done in this phase and it means, the researcher starts finding information on different aspects regarding the solution. The researcher interacts personally with all the stakeholders for getting the information and also getting real time data. The researcher writes down all the information that they collected for future reference (Morales, 2016).

Observe

From the information collected from different sources, the researcher organizes everything to find what the information that is useful for them and they will delete all the unnecessary information (Morales, 2016).

Reflect

Based on the information that was gathered, researcher will identify different findings related to the research. This is the main thing because; the researcher finds a solution for their problem (Morales, 2016).

Action research is advantageous because we get daily outcomes from the research and we will interact with everyone regarding the problem. This research is qualitative and participative and the researcher uses multiple data sources for completing the research. Through this action research, the researcher will go through critical analysis and it will also give a better experience. Action research will fill lot of gaps with proper knowledge and in this methodology; the researcher prepares lot of questionnaires, conducts interviews and collects eye-tracking data from the people. Action is not about finding a solution but it is more about improving the skills, techniques and strategies of a researcher (Morales, 2016).

Action research is also best used in technology innovation and learning because this makes the researcher to learn about lot of new things and to develop his skills in the field of technology. In the same way, the researcher can also propose a new solution for an kind of industry. Action research is also a best methodology for finding the appropriate evidences and through this we can also study the different effects of the teaching practices. Action research is also best used for developing and implementing new innovation concepts in the business. Action research will definitely be used in the increase of sales for the retailers (Kunio, Beal & Takahashi, 2015).

I assume that action research is the right methodology for performing the research and for getting right results. All the decisions that are taken in the Action research will be based on the data collected in my research and all this data is also collected from multiple sources. Action research will be the most effective and efficient methodology and all the conclusion will be evidence based. The other important thing of this research is the cyclic process and we can add correct all the errors of the iteration in the next iteration. There will be proper output from every iteration, which is also an advantage for the research.

Literature Review

Retail market is one of the top sectors in the business world and they have highest revenue range with many stores and e-Commerce platform. This sector is lacking in proper software and tools for running their business and due to this problem, many companies are near to the closing situation. Companies have various problems in billing, user interface, customer engagement and analytics for providing proper services to the customers. The retail has lot of investments in buying stock and establishing a store but they don’t have proper management and this is leading the organizations to move into losses. For example: If we consider Costco, they have lot of data from different areas but the organization doesn’t have proper idea in using proper tools (Morteza, Daniel & Jose, 2011).

There are various modules that are important in the current application for retailers and among them, the main module is the proper billing system, e-Commerce application, inventory management application with additional features like data analytics. There are various e-Commerce tools that are right available in the market and they can be converted according to the business needs. There are also different data analytics tools, which are present in the current industry for analyzing large sets of data. For a proper e-Commerce application, it is also required to add a payment gateway. By adding all these features there will be more customer attraction and their acceptance of doing business (Viswanath, James & Xin, 2012).

E-Commerce Application

For developing an e-Commerce platform, an organization can develop the application from scratch or they can use different e-Commerce tools available in the industry. Among different tools it is very important for an organization to use right tool according to the business needs. In an E-commerce application there are two sections and they are front-end and back end sections. For developing the front-end, the company should definitely use the technologies available in the industry and for back end development; company should use the strong programming languages. The different tools that are also available in the industry for simplifying the development are Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix and Drupal Commerce. Most of the eCommerce applications are drag and drop applications where it will be very easy for the new developers (Weiyin & Kevin, 2006).

Data Analytics

Data analytics is the most important technology innovation in the current world. Even it is started in previous decades the use of analytics has been increased recently. There are different techniques and tools that are being used in the companies and these are very useful for the retail sector. Among the different analytics tools that are available in the industry, some of them are:

Tableau. Tableau has many good features like fast analytics which is used for analyzing the data very quickly, Ease of use where the users can easily drag and drop for analysis without rigorous coding. Using tableau, we can analyze any kind of data right from small excel sheet to big data. With the help of Tableau, an organization can create smart dashboards, which are useful for the company to analyze the data very quickly. As the data is changing frequently, Tableau also updates the data along with the database and all the analysis can be shared to organization staff in less time. Tableau has desktop application, server application and also online applications (Tableau, n.d.).

SAS. It is one of the most powerful tool in analytics sector. It has different products and solutions, which are useful for various industries. There are different enterprise solutions like advanced analytics, business intelligence & analytics, cloud analytics and data management software’s. SAS also has Supply chain intelligence, which is also best used for retail sector. Among the different solutions provided by SAS, advanced analytics has different features for analyzing the data and they are showcasing the visually for better understanding to the user. Advanced analytics has features like interactive reporting, dashboards and Mobile BI solutions. SAS has separate tools for retail analytics, which has different features like Stock intelligence, supply and demand planning, customer experience and insight, cyber security and data management. With the different features available in SAS retail analytics, the organization can plan everything in a proper manner and to increase the revenue (SAS, n.d.).

Qlikview. Qlikview is another tool in the market which is used for analyzing the data and showcasing the data visually. There are different products from Qlikview are desktop, cloud, desktop and GeoAnalytics. Qlikview has different solutions for various industries and among them, retail solution is also one of the best solution. The solution provided for retail sector mostly focus on optimizing the supply chain business (Qlik, n.d.).

Payment Gateway

Payment gateway is one of the best integration to online market zone. Companies need to integrate a proper payment gateway while they start a ecommerce platform. With the help of payment gateway, companies can easily draw cash from customer account to their business bank account. While integrating a payment gateway, it is also important to use right security features because of the increase in online fraud activities. Amazon and Paypal provide best payment gateway services for the businesses (Nicole, 2015).

Development tools & technologies

Companies also need to use right development tools when they focus on developing new tools for their business. In developing these tools, all the companies should focus on tools that are more reliable and secure. For developing a proper web application, companies can use tools like Salesforce where the whole development will get simple because of different features available in the solutions. Salesforce provides different solutions on cloud where the companies can manage the development and customer management in a easy manner. Salesforce can also be used for developing the applications in a more sophisticated manner. Customer relationship management is very important in retail sector because companies need to increase their business if they focus more on solving the customer needs (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

Social Media Integration

With the increase of new opportunities and challenges in retail sector, companies are focusing more on increasing the customer base. In order to increase customer experience to reach more customers, social media is one of the best and affordable platforms. As everyone individual has a social networking account, companies can focus more on social media marketing and this tool can be integrating to the current business application. Companies can also perform SEO marketing for being top in search engines (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

Proposal

For developing a right application for retailers, my research will show a proper solution to all the organizations. For completing my research, I will follow Action research methodology and this methodology will make me perfect in different areas. As a researcher, I can solve my problems related to the technology in retailers and this will be a right solution to the companies and it will also boost my career in the technology world. I have chosen Action research because as a researcher I need to interact with different industry professionals for completing my research. Action research is a participatory process where the researcher participates directly in collecting data from different sources related to the problem. For completing this research, the researcher also considers all the related technologies to the problem because Action research follows a holistic approach. At the end of this complete action research, the researcher will be strong in technical knowledge, problem solving and data collection activities. By end of this research, the researcher will also be strong in application development and data analytics. The different iterations in this research project are:

First iteration: Learn about different problems underlying in Retail industry

In this iteration, the researcher will learn about different problems that are underlying in the retail industry and those problems can be either related to technology or business. The researcher will collect requirements from different retail industry organizations and will also research online by reading articles related to retail sector problems. The researcher will also know about the current technologies that are being used in the retail industry organizations.

Second iteration: Learn about different ways of Application development

In this iteration, the researcher will learn about different ways of application development. Web applications are the most used applications in the current business industries and to develop these applications for solving business there are many ways according to the company budget and time. In this iteration, the researcher will interact with different developers for collecting data related to application development. The researcher will also search different journals and books on application development to collect right data.

Third iteration: Comparing different Analytics solutions for retail sector

Choosing analytics solution is also one of the major problems in retail sector and this iteration will solve the problem because the researcher will analyze different solutions to provide the best solution. For performing this action, the researcher will interact with different people who are working with different analytics tools and the researcher will also collect data from different vendor websites.

Fourth iteration: Finalizing right tools, technologies and process to develop the application.

Developing a retail application needs lot of technology innovations and also we can add some advanced features and to overcome this problem, the researcher will analyze different tools in retail application and how they can solve the problems of retail industry. By doing this iteration, the researcher will know about different features that are being used in retail sector. The features of some of the retail applications are used for retail companies all over the world.

Fifth iteration: Developing and Integrating the Applications

In this iteration, the researcher will develop the UI of the application and he will also develop the database of the application. The researcher will develop a common database with all the data entities and he will integrate all the third party applications with the main database. The researcher will finally provide the solution for an enterprise retail application.

Figure 1: Iterations presentation. “Special issue on action research in information systems: making is research relevant to practice—foreword.” by Richard, B., & Michael, D. M. (2004). Journal MIS Quarterly, 28(3), 329-335.

First Iteration: Learn about Different Problems Underlying in Retail Industry

Plan

This iteration is the first step in my Action research of developing an application for retailers. In this iteration, the researcher will find all the problems that are faced by the retail companies. In this competitive business world, there are many problems for the companies in making business and the researcher will gather data from different sources regarding the problems. The researcher will collect all the technology and business requirements that the retailers are looking for, and he will also know the hurdles that are present in the retail business. As a part of this iteration, the researcher will have four strong goal and they are learning the underlying problems in retail industry. Learning about technology requirements of the retail companies and studying about current technologies that are using by them.

The researcher will take the whole process around 15 days to complete and in this time, the researcher will read different journals and articles related to retail sector problems and the researcher will also read books and articles on different technologies that are currently used in the retail industry. The researcher should also need to speak with professionals who are working in retail sector technology department. As a researcher, I will also use Google Search Engine and Youtube for collecting information about the problems in retail sector.

I will interact with Mrs. Sindhu who works for BJs and Mr. Arjun who works for Target retail to collect the real-time information in retail sector. The researcher will ask questions regarding their technology use and what kind of problems they are facing to make business. The researcher will also document everything as a rough draft and he needs to analyze everything and sort them as proper information. The researcher will also collect different kinds of risks that are occurring in the retail sector business. One other important thing is that, the researcher should document every minute information and that will be useful for his research. The researcher should research different retail websites and look for different features they are offering right now.

Action

The research has followed every step that he has planned and as the beginning of his action plan, the researcher searched for different articles and journals that explained the problems in retail sector. This action stage takes the majority time in this iteration and the researcher has documented everything along with the research. The researcher used Internet for his research for finding articles and journals and all this documents provided information about the problems in retail sector. In the next step, the researcher collected information about the different features that are present in the current retail applications.

After the researcher collected information about the different features then he spoke with Mrs. Sindhu who works for BJs as a Systems Analyst. The researcher spoke about 1 hour on 13th Feb 2017 and discussed about various technologies that their company is working and also learned about their business problems. The researcher also spoke with Mr. Arjun on 14th Feb 2017 for almost 1.5 hours regarding the problems facing by Target Company in making more business. The researcher also collected requirements from Mr. Arjun about the different applications and business needs that most of the retail companies are looking for. Researcher also watched some YouTube videos on the problems facing by retail companies. The researcher also collected information about different tools and technologies that are currently available in the market and verified whether any retail company is using any of the tools. Some of the videos interviews by many retail industry CEO’s also gave information about the goals and vision of many companies. The researcher documented everything properly in his laptop for future reference.

Observe

As the main motive behind this iteration is to find all the problems in retail sector and to know the requirements of retail sector, the researcher collected data from various sources accordingly. The researcher collected information from different websites and he also spoke with professionals working in retail sector. The researcher observed that most of the retail companies are running in losses because of improper technology strategy and some of the companies are unaware of the technology implementations and they don’t have proper idea of what technology and solution need to be implemented.

Based on the research, I found that there are various problems with retail companies and one of the main problems is moving onto Omni Channel and this means, a company wants to be both in store format as well as in the online format. Some companies don’t have a proper application to achieve their goal (Wojciech & Richard, 2014). The researcher found that there is no proper use of analytics in the retail companies and by which they couldn’t able to take proper business decisions. Some of the companies don’t have a proper supply chain management and inventory management solutions for providing all the needed products to the customers. Some of the top companies don’t have proper analytics applications and report generation tools (Lanlan, 2014).

The researcher also browsed some of the retail websites like WalMart, Amazon and Flipkart and found that only Walmart and Amazon have best features among most of the retail websites. The researcher also found that many of the retailers don’t have proper security features in their websites and most of them don’t have social media integration to reach more customers (Julie, Paul & Carley, 2014). Social media is one of the major mediums for reaching more customers and doing targeted marketing (Efthymios, Carlota & Miguel, 2008). Privacy of customer information is also becoming major concern for retail companies and because of which some of the companies are loosing business. Logistics is also a major concern in retail sector because a company needs to get lot of goods from other places and they also need to deliver goods to the people who ordered online (John & Leigh, 2014).

Reflect

From the whole iteration, the researcher has found lot of interesting data about retail industry. The researcher found that the whole iteration was very useful for his entire research and he have collected lot of important information regarding the problems in retail industries and their technology requirements. The whole iteration has completed on time and the researcher have gathered lot of data but took the appropriate information related to his research. The researcher learned about different requirements that the retail sector is looking and how they can change the whole business.

Apart from finding different problems that the companies are facing, the researcher also found information about the applications that are being used by top retail companies. This iteration has extended the knowledge of researcher to higher levels because of which, the research will reach the right goal. The interaction with the retail industry professionals also provided the researcher with right information. By researching the journals and articles first, the researcher got some basic knowledge about retail sector and came to know about the problems facing by them. Once the researcher interacted with the people working in retail companies then he came to understand about the problems very deeply. The interview by top CEOs also helped the researcher to know about their goals and the problems facing by them.

The overall work performed by the researcher is very good and this information will help the researcher to focus on right data and solution in the next iteration. I am extremely satisfied for researching lot of new information and also about interacting with people and knowing the real time scenarios. For succeeding in retail sector business, the company should go into Omni-channel by which they will have Online presence and they need to have Supply chain software, Inventory management software, Analytics applications, Social media integrations, Payment channels and Customer management software (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

Second Iteration: Learn about different ways of Application Development

Plan

In this iteration, the researcher will focus on various types of application development. In the previous iteration, the researcher learned about the underlying problems in retail industry and in this iteration, he will start to find the solutions for the underlying problems. In this iteration, the researcher will focus on gathering information about the development types that are being followed by most of the companies in today’s industries. Retail industry is currently facing lot of of problems in providing best services to their customers and the application that is supposed to be developed should consist of all the features.

The iteration primary focus is to know about the development types and the researcher should also know about the third party tools that are present in the current industries. This iteration should take place around one week for completion and it should be completed from March 1st 2017 to March 7th 2017. For the first three days, the researcher will collect data from different official websites and books that are available online and the researcher will also browse for YouTube video which explains about the types of application developments. The researcher should also look for some third party applications, which are already developed, and those applications can be used for business purpose by converting them into companies business use. For a retail application there are various modules that need to be developed and for each module, the researcher need to use different technology.

Once the researcher finish finding information online then he should meet professionals by taking appoint with them. The researcher should meet in one of the seven days for learning about the application development types that the current companies are using. The researcher should only official sources of information and he should not consider any source of information, which doesn’t have any proof. This is a small iteration because of only information research in the iteration. The researcher should ask questions to the research based upon the application development and he should ask questions on application development types that current companies are using. The questions should also have about the different third party applications that most of the companies are using for getting their work simple. The researcher should also focus on documenting all the information that he is collecting from various sources and he should categorize the information so that he can understand better in the later stages. The risks for this iteration are only gathering official information and the researcher should avoid all the information from non-trusted websites. The final deliverables for this iteration are the types of application developments and the third party tools that are being used in the companies.

Action

The researcher started the iteration by knowing about application development and then he started knowing about various types of applications that are being used by the individuals. The researcher has also known about the application developments types that the current industries are working and how they are being helpful for solving the business problems. The researcher started finding information on online libraries and Google scholar where he got various books on application development. The books provided the information on different ways of application development and how each development type is helping the organization in reaching their goal.

I have met Mr. Arjun on March 3rd 2017 at 5:00 PM EST and spoke for 2 hours regarding the iteration goal. Mr. Arjun works for Target Corporation where it is a retail sector company and in the whole meeting, the researcher asked different questions on retail company applications. After finished meeting with Mr. Arjun, the researcher has researched other sources about various tools that are being used in current retail industry and how these tools are helping the companies in completing their work. The researcher has also met Mr. Harsha on March 6th 2017 at 1:00 PM EST and Mr. Harsha works as an application developer in Whole Foods. The researcher had a conversation about the third party application tools that are being used in the current retail application. The meeting with Mr. Harsha has taken place for almost 2 hours and the researcher has documented everything that Mr. Harsha is sharing with me. The researcher has well documented all the information gathering and once she finish it all then he has categorized all the information. The researcher has also watched some of the videos that explained about the ratings on different application types that are being used in the current companies. The researcher has finally finished collecting information that he planned in this iteration.

Observe

Based on the information collected from various sources, the researcher has concluded some important points by eliminating the unwanted data gathering. The researcher came to know some interesting facts in the application development. Previously, all the companies use to develop desktop applications but now, most of the companies are only developing web applications because of the increased Internet access. The researcher also got information about different ways of developing those web applications for decreasing the work done by the company. From the articles, the researcher learned that some of the companies are developing the applications from scratch and some of the companies are buying the applications from a third party based on their industry. Some companies are developing applications on cloud for decreasing their costs. 

To be precise, there are different types of application developments that are mainly performed by the companies all over the world and they are:

• Desktop Applications: These applications are only usable on desktop and they cannot be accessed from other systems. These applications are completely standalone applications and some of the desktop applications are Microsoft Office, Adobe reader and other Flash games (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

• Web Applications: These applications can only be accessible if the system has an active Internet connection. These applications don’t reside in the computer but they can be accessible if the computer has an Internet connection. There are many web applications which we use every day for online bill payments (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

• Mobile Applications: These applications are exclusively designed for running on the mobile phones and other tablets. These applications also need to active Internet connection depending on the use. The mobile applications are the most developed applications in today’s business world. Mobile applications and desktop applications require lot of security features because of the increased number of security attacks (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

• Cloud based Applications: These are applications that doesn’t reside on our mobile or desktop and these applications are resided over the cloud and they can accessible through Internet connection. All the cloud applications are deployed on some shared servers where all the users can access the application using a browser (Wojciech & Richard, 2014).

The researcher has also learn that most of the types of applications can also be developed from scratch and some of the companies are using third party applications and converting them into their business use by modifying some changes. The researcher also learned that application development is one of the tough task because there are various sections in the development. For developing the applications, the company needs to use Java or .NET frameworks and different programming languages can be used for development. If the company’s lacks with resources or budget, the companies can also some retail back end or content management applications like WooCommerce, Shopify, Wix and Vend (Arjun, Personal Communication, March 3rd 2017). All these applications can also be worked in the form of POS and e-Commerce. These tools are also helpful for providing the application in various types of device sizes.

Reflect

This is one of the best iterations that the researcher has worked on because the researcher has only planned for less time to complete this iteration. The researcher finished all his work in less time and he has collected all the information that he planned in his agenda. The researcher started his information gathering from different official websites, which is a great advantage for completing the research. The researcher found that the complete iteration is very useful because for developing an application, an individual should know the types of application developments and the researcher has reached this goal.

The researcher followed a simple procedure for gathering the information because in the first three days, the researcher collected information from online sources and the very next day, he met Mr. Arjun for getting clarity on the application development types that the companies are working. The researcher has used books, journals and articles for collecting the information and the research has also watched video for different third party applications on how they are useful for saving the organization time. The interaction with the professionals has provided me the right and real-time information that is occurring the current industries.

The information, which I gathered in this iteration, is extremely useful for application development and I am extremely satisfied with the process, which I followed during this iteration. The researcher found that many of the companies are moving onto cloud based applications and third party applications in order to save costs of the company and also to save lot of time in application development. The researcher has also followed the schedule that he has prepared in the beginning of the iteration and he has also met all the professionals whom he intended to meet for collecting the information. The researcher didn’t face any trouble during this iteration.

Third Iteration: Comparing different Analytics and other business process Applications for Retail sector

Plan

The main goal for this iteration is to learn about different analytics applications and business process applications that are useful for the retail sector. There are different areas that the retail sector commonly works and all the works in this sector will be automated with the suitable applications. In this iteration, the researcher will gather information about different areas of retail business and what application will be suitable for completing the operations in that sector. The researcher will first make a list of different areas in the retail business and then he will research about different types of applications that are available to complete the task in each area.

Once the researcher will have list of different applications in each area then he will compare each application advantages and their uses. If any application will have majority of advantages and if it covers most of the components then that particular application will be chosen for the retail application. For gathering this information, the researcher will use journals and articles, which explain about retail sector and then he will use official company websites for researching about the product information. In this iteration, documentation is very important because the data, which he collects in this iteration, will be useful in the next iteration of this research.

Once the researcher finish gathering the information from various sources then he will meet professionals who work in the retail sector to know more about the types of applications that are required to run the business. The researcher should also watch YouTube videos on various applications, which explain about the functionalities that each application is providing. This iteration will take place from March 8th to March 17th 2017 and for the first five days the researcher should collect information from different sources and once he finish with his data collection, the researcher will meet professional for getting clarity on the data he collected. The researcher should eliminate all the unwanted data and he should prepare a list of technologies that he wishes to be present in the application. The risks in the iteration are collecting the data, which is not relevant to the iteration, and the researcher should be careful in collecting the information from right sources.

Action

As per the plan, the researcher has completed his data gathering, which he started knowing about the types of areas in retail business. The researcher is very conscious in information gathering and in the beginning of the iteration, the researcher has focused on learning different areas of retail sector. For this data gathering, the researcher has used various official journals in retail sector and he has also gathered data from famous retail articles. Based on the data that the researcher gathered, he came to know that, the retail business need an Inventory management system, POS application system, Analytics application, Supply chain management system and customer management system.

When the researcher came to know the different areas of the application then he researched about the list of vendors who are available in each application. Once he came to know about the list of vendors in each application, the researcher compared all the application by preparing a table with the list of features in each application. Once the researcher compared the applications based on the Internet sources, the researcher met professionals to know more about the real-time use of those applications.

The researcher spoke with Ms. Sindhu on March 10th 2017, at 4:00 PM for almost 1.5 hour and discussed about the tools that were using in BJs and how they are using for increasing the business of the organization. I have also spoke with Mr. Arjun on March 11th 2017 at 11:00 AM for 2 hours and also spoke about the tools that were using in Target. In both these meetings, the researcher only again re-verified about the types of areas in retail business and he asked questions about the right tools for their business. As per the plan, the researcher has also watched videos on different tools that are being used in top retail companies.

Observe

The researcher has collected information from various sources and with the bulk amount of information; the researcher has clearly analyzed and made a proper data filtration for finalizing the list of tools. Based on the information collected, the researcher came to know that there are various areas in retail business and they are inventory management, supply chain management, POS application and analytics application. The researcher has also found that there are many vendors, which are providing applications for making the operations running successfully.

The researcher first analyzed all the analytics applications, which are provided by different vendors, and they are Tableau, Qlikview, SAS and Microstrategy. When the researcher compared all the different analytics applications then he has found some interesting features for each application. The cost of Tableau is cheap when compared with all other retail applications and it is useful for all sizes of business. Visual representations of data can be easily made and an organization can quickly prepare dashboards for providing better results to an organization. Data importing is very easy in Tableau because, the application takes any kind of data without any major changes. Beginners in the organization can easily start working on Tableau with less management. In Microstrategy, the advantages are having OLAP tools, which can divide the data into minute levels for better analysis. Database maintenance will be very easy with the use of metadata and database maintenance is also very simple with the help of tools available. Reporting and other statistics will very easy and there is also a software development kit, which is used to customize applications and to get data from other applications. SAS has lot of features and it costs around $10,000 per year and there are many features that are provided by SAS tool. The tool is good for statistical analysis, data mining, analyzing text and there are various other tools in SAS and they are business intelligence, fraud detection, data management and customer management (SAS, n.d.).

The researcher has also collected data about CRM applications and he also learned about CRM. CRM means customer relationship management system which is used to manage all the customers related to the organization and with the help of CRM, the company will have unique data which eliminates all the confusion with the organization employees. The researcher has found different CRM vendors and some of them are Salesforce, Marketing 360 and Insightly. Salesforce CRM has lot of features where the organization can manage all their customers and they can also track all the sales of various customers. The company can manage email integration and they can also market different products based on the customer behavior. With the help of Salesforce CRM they can engage customers to their business (Salesforce, n.d.). The researcher has also gathered information about Marketing 360 CRM application and it has various features like SEO optimization, website landing pages, contact management, email campaigns and social marketing (Microstrategy, n.d.). The researcher has also gathered information about Insightly CRM, which has lot of features like lead management, customer management, event management, file sharing and lightning fast search. Based on all information from various sources, the researcher has found that the inventory management should be developed in-house by the company and for developing the inventory, the researcher should develop a common database which integrates with all the applications. The POS software and other remaining software applications will be finalized in the next iteration.

Reflect

This iteration is really very helpful for the researcher to learn about different tools that are present in the retail sector. The researcher has also learned about the tools from different vendors and it gave him immense knowledge on the works that are being performed in retail sector. The researcher has successfully used all the information sources that he planned in the beginning of the iteration and he even met two professionals for learning about real-time information in the business.

The researcher has followed a tight schedule because he gave most of the time for final iteration. As this iteration is all about gathering information about various applications in retail sector, he only gave fewer days for completing the iteration. The researcher has documented everything as per the plan and he will use all the sources through the action research and he will also use the information sources in the future. The researcher learned that analytics and CRM are the most important applications in retail sector and he has also learned about the tools that are being used in the current organizations.

The researcher is extremely satisfied with the data that he has collected and he worked everything according to the plan. The researcher didn’t face any troubles because of the data collection and even the meeting with professionals has helped him a lot in finishing this iteration. The researcher collected some unwanted data in the iteration, which he has deleted in the analysis phase. The researcher has also learned that without all the applications, a retail industry cannot work in profits and they even cannot attract customers. The researcher also understood that all the companies should have all different application components to run their business with ease. The video tutorials which explained about different analytics applications and CRM applications has also helped the researcher because in that the CEO or the organization staff has explained about the advantages of using the particular application.

Fourth Iteration: Finalizing right tools, technologies and process to develop the Application

Plan

In this iteration, the researcher will use all the data, which he collected in his previous iterations and based on the ratings and information from different professionals, the researcher will finalize all the tools and technologies that will be useful for this retail application. Apart from finalizing the third party tools, the researcher will research about other tools and he will finalize all the remain tools that are required for developing the complete retail application.

For completing the goal of this iteration, the researcher will once again make a list of components that are required for retail application and this time he will use the information from previous iteration and in this iteration, there are other components, which need to be finalized for developing the application. The researcher will work in this iteration from March 18th 2017 to March 30th 2017 and in this whole 12 days, the researcher will finalize all the tools and will also install necessary tools that are required for developing the remaining section of the application. The researcher will compare all the information that he collected in the previous iterations with the requirements of the current business area. Based on this comparison, the researcher will finalize the right analytics tool and he will also finalize the right CRM tools. For developing the inventory management software, the researcher will install the required software’s and the researcher will also finalize the POS software and Content management system that will be used in the retail application.

The researcher will also finalize the other wanted tools that are required for developing a whole retail application. The researcher will compare all the information that he collected in the previous iterations with the requirements for the retail application and he will cross check everything that the application is meeting the scope or not. The researcher will meet atleast three professionals in this iteration in order to finalize all the tools and for the development of the application. For gathering the information, the researcher will also articles, videos and journals, which provide majority of the information. There are some risks in getting confused in selecting the right tool and the researcher should be very careful by properly organizing the data so that he can take better decision.

Action

According to the plan developed by the researcher, he has started gathering the data from previous iterations and he has also collected data, which he planned. In the previous iterations, the researcher has collected the information of analytics tools and CRM tools and he used all that data to compare with the project requirements and based on the comparisons, the researcher has finalized the right analytics tool, CRM tool for retail business.

For POS software, the researcher has compared many tools that are currently available in the market and he has chosen one tool among them. The researcher has installed SQL server for developing the database of the application and the researcher has also installed webstorm tool for adding new features to the UI of the application and for developing the inventory management application. The researcher will use WooCommerce for managing the content of the whole application (Oztaysi, 2014). The researcher keeps a checklist for developing all the applications whether he has completed finding a solution for every application or not. The researcher has also finalized to develop supply chain management module to this retail application. The researcher has gathered information from all the technology articles and journals and he watched videos of top professionals who have explained about the types of applications that are required for retail sector.

In this iteration, the researcher spoke with three professionals and one of them is Mr. Sharma who works in Walmart labs. The researcher met Mr. Sharma on March 24th 2017 at 4:00 PM and discussed about the features that he want to consider for the retail application. The researcher spoke for almost two hours for learning about different applications in retail sector. The researcher also spoke with Ms. Sindhu who works for Blackberry. The researcher spoke on March 25, 2017 at 6:00 PM for one hour regarding the different e-commerce tools, development tools for developing the retail application. I have also spoke with Mr. Vivek for two hours on March 27, 2017 at 11:00 AM.  Vivek works for Deloitte digital and he has explained everything about the UI development, database development for the retail application.

The researcher has also finalized additional tools that he wants to add to the retail application to make it as a perfect application. The researcher has finalized all the tools that are required for the application and he has also compared them with the initial requirements of the application.

Observe

The researcher has collected large amounts of information from different sources and once he finished collecting the information, the researcher has finalized everything. Based on the requirements, the retail application needs an analytics application for analyzing large sets of data and it should provide clear graphs for the question requested by the user. Based on this requirement, the researcher found that only Tableau provides color graphs for preparing dashboards. The researcher has finalized Tableau is the right analytics tool for the retail application. Tableau has many features like quick dashboard preparation, quick answers to the questions asked by the executives and the tool is good for integrating data from various sources. Tableau also has good collaboration with other employees in the organization. The cost of Tableau is also cheap when compared with other analytics tools (Tableau, n.d.).

The researcher has also finalized Salesforce CRM tool for customer management system because many of the professionals suggested that Salesforce is the best and most used tool in all the companies. Salesforce has many features for managing the customers and it has features like email integration, running different marketing techniques and it has also many integrated features (Cusumano, 2010). When the researcher has collected information about different POS software’s, the researcher has got some interesting results like Vend POS, Shopify POS, Lightspeed POS and based on all the POS software’s, the researcher has finalized Vend POS software for the retail application because it has also provided inventory application for the business and it has best UI which can be easily understandable for the users.

Based on the information that the researcher collected on content management systems, the researcher has finalized WooCommerce because it provides all the features for a retail application and many of the professionals has also suggested WooCommerce as the right tool for retail application (Ravensbergen, 2015). The researcher has installed SQL server and Webstorm for developing the database and front end of the application. The researcher has also finalized other tools based on the guidance from professionals and other video tutorials by top executives. The researcher has also finalized other tools, which are very important in a retail application and they are payment gateway and social media plugin. Payment gateway is very useful for finishing the payments from the customers and social media plugin is useful for marketing the business in social media. The researcher has also taken care of privacy of the application, which is very important in retail sector. The researcher has also finalized using Agile methodology for developing the application which is suggested by all the professionals (Vivek, Personal Communication, March 27th 2017).

Reflect

The researcher has learnt many new things during this iteration and he learned how to compare different applications with the application requirements. The researcher has forgot about the additional features of the application but in the middle of the iteration, he researched about them and finalized the tools. The researcher has learned deep about analytics applications and he learned how different applications are useful for the retail companies. The researcher has got enough time for finalizing the tools and the meetings with the professionals has also helped him a lot in his research.

This iteration is really productive where I learned about different applications and how to use them in the retail business. The researcher has made use of all the online resources for better collection of information. The researcher learned a lot about the use of every single application in the companies and he also learned that a business will only be successful if they have a clear business process and all the applications are properly integrated.

Among all the previous iterations, the researcher worked hard for this iteration because he has to finalize tools, which are very helpful for solving the retail business problems. In this iteration, the researcher took help of all the professionals and made a final decision on different tools. The decision once made cannot be revoked in a business and it will bring great loss to the company and that is the reason, the researcher took utmost care. The researcher learned that all the official websites provide majority of the information about the product and he also learned that a common database can be integrated with all the applications and it will make the whole application as an enterprise application. There are many websites, which also provided comparison on different features of the application, and even that information helped the researcher in finalizing the tools.

Fifth Iteration: Developing and Integrating the Applications

Plan

In this iteration, the researcher uses all the information from his previous iterations and he will also use all the installations from his previous iterations for completing the research activity. In this iteration, the researcher will develop the application components that are required to make a complete application. In the previous iteration, the researcher has finalized of using Agile methodology for developing the application. The researcher has finalized Agile methodology because of the iteration process and new requirements can also be added to the iterations in the middle of the project development.

In this iteration, the researcher will develop the required UI components of the application and he will also develop the common database required for the application. As part of the database, the researcher will first analyze the requirements of the database and he will define attributes for the application and then will develop the database. This iteration is the biggest iteration in this whole action and this iteration will take place from April 1st 2017 to April 25th 2017 for 25 days where the researcher will install all the required tools and he will work on developing the database and UI of the application.

Once the researcher finish creating the database for the application, the researcher will focus on creating the UI of the application. With the help of WooCommerce, the researcher will get a basic template for creating the online e-Commerce website and to this template the researcher will add all the necessary functionalities by writing code on Webstorm tool which he installed in the previous iteration. The researcher will use SQL server for creating the tables required for the database and the researcher should focus the database components according to the POS application and e-Commerce application.

For designing the UI of the application, the researcher will follow video tutorials, which explained about different programming languages that are useful for creating the user interface of the application. The researcher should mainly focus on integration of all the applications and database is the toughest component according to the inputs by professionals in the previous iterations. In this iteration also, the researcher will meet different professionals who are working in application development and the researcher should take tips about the application development from these professionals. The researcher should be careful in application development because sometimes there will be problem in integrating the data. The researcher should also take care of comparing the current application development with the requirements of the application.

Action

The researcher started the action of this iteration once he finished planning the iteration and in this iteration, he first analyzed all his previous work and first he started with database development, which is an important section of this iteration. The researcher analyzed all the entities for this whole application and to reach this goal, the researcher has made a list of entities and attributes for the application. Once the researcher has finalized the list of attributes of this research, he has drawn an E-R diagram using MS Visio. The researcher has listed all the attributes on an excel sheet and that helped him to draw the E-R diagram in an easy way. The researcher once finished his E-R diagram, he has created the tables using the SQL server, which he installed on his computer. The researcher has finalized the complete database application when he spoke with one of the professional.

The researcher has met Ms. Jyothi who works as a database designer for Bloomberg and she helped me a lot in providing tips for database development. I have met Ms. Jyothi on April 10th 2017 at 5:00 pm and spoke for 2 hours. The researcher has also made suggestions that were explained by Ms. Jyothi. The researcher has also met Mr. Vamsi who works for Walmart as a full stack developer.  The researcher spoke with Mr. Vamsi for 1 hour on April 15th 2017, where he provided some tips in my current UI development. Based on the tips from Mr. Vamsi, the researcher has started working on the UI of the application. The researcher has also developed the application using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The researcher made sure that all the UI components are integrated with the database of the application. The researcher also spoke with Mr. Vishnu on April 22nd 2017 at 5:00 PM and spoke for 2 hours regarding the UI, which I have developed for the retail application. Mr. Vishnu has told me some changes for my UI and I have made those changes in the last days of my iteration.

Once the researcher has developed the UI and database of the application, all the data will be uploaded onto the database from an excel sheet and this data is well integrated with the POS application and e-Commerce application. The CRM application has customer database, which has also integrated with the main database of the retail application. The researcher has also added payment gateway and social media plugin to this retail application, which are useful for online transactions and marketing the business over the social media.

Observe

The researcher has finally developed the database, UI of the application and integrated all the applications for completing a whole retail application. In this iteration, the researcher first analyzed the database and prepared attributes for the database and they are as follows:

Table 1: Product Table

Table 2: Customer Table

Table 3: Billing Table

The researcher has created a Visio E-R diagram for creating the database of the application. The researcher wrote SQL queries for creating the database. Once the database is created, the researcher has developed the UI of the application with the template that is already present in the WooCommerce and he has made some changes to the application using UI languages. The researcher found that the database integration is very tough because there are many other new database attributes, which are added, in the later stages of the application. The researcher has used Tableau for the analytics on the sales that are performed on the POS of the application (He & Da Xu, 2014).

The researcher has added the social media plugins once he has created a page on the Facebook and Twitter and then the link will the copied onto the website as a plugin. The researcher has also added payment gateway of PayPal, which is integrated to the retail application. The researcher has learned that the data in the database should be clean and all the attributes in various applications should match with the database attributes (Jyothi, Personal Communication, April 10th 2017). The researcher has gathered lot of data which he filtered everything for the sake of application development.

Reflect

After the completion of this iteration, the researcher has found that he has worked very hard in this iteration and he has followed all the steps with utmost care. The researcher has gone through tough procedures for developing the application. The researcher followed all the steps in application development and database development for completing the whole iteration. The researcher has faced some troubles in database development and UI development, which he got cleared by watching the online tutorials and meeting the professionals.

This iteration is very useful and productive because the researcher has completed his database development and UI development with lot of learning experience as well. The researcher faced troubles in writing code for UI but meeting with Mr. Vishnu has helped me a lot in developing the UI and solving the problems in development. In this iteration, the researcher has installed all the different third party applications like Saleforce, Vend and Tableau from the software websites, which helped the researcher to integrate with other applications.

The overall performance of this iteration is very productive and satisfactory which made the researcher to reach his goal. As in the first iteration, I have observed that Omni channel is very important in the current retail industries and in this iteration, I have reached the right goal in providing the solution which can be both used in-store and online.

As a researcher, my the end of this iteration, I have successfully integrated POS application, e-Commerce application, Salesforce CRM, common database, Tableau analytics application. The researcher has also successfully added social media tools, security tools and payment tools for making it a complete retail application. The researcher has finally discussed the same with Mr. Arjun and he even satisfied with the solution that I have developed for the retail industries.

Learning Summary

I have successfully developed the solution for the retail industries using the Action research methodology. Action research methodology has really helped in completing my research because I have followed everything in an iteration process, which helped me to divide the work, which I perform in different parts so that I can carry forward the output of one iteration to other iteration. In the beginning of the iteration, the researcher is only aware of the problem in retail industries but as the researcher started learning about every concept and he has also used his academic skills for completing the iterations.

The researcher first defined the problem of the research and then he learned about different methodologies for performing the research. Finally he got fixed with the Action research methodology, which was introduced in olden days by Kurt Lewin, and this research methodology is best used for implementing new solutions and to solve problems in any business. I have also learned about the implementation of Action research in technology and I got more confidence about the use of this methodology in my research project. Then I have analyzed my problem and then created some iterations to solve the business problem and to create a solution. The researcher has divided the whole project into five iterations where in each iteration, the researcher will go through different stages where each stage is focused on providing the solution for retail industry.

All the iterations are divided into four stages and they are plan, action, observe and reflect. In the planning stage, the researcher has developed his plan for the iteration and in the action stage the researcher has implemented all the plans that he made and in the observation stage, the researcher has finally observed the results that he got from the data and in the reflection stage he has mentioned all the learning’s from the iteration.

In this whole action research, the researcher first analyzed the problems in retail industry and then based on the problems, he has analyzed the requirements for the retail industry. Then in the subsequent iterations, the researcher learned about different types of application development, different types of analytics applications, compared all the applications with the requirements of the applications and in the final iteration, the researcher has integrated all the application and has developed the UI of the application and database of the application.

The researcher has learned lot of things from this whole iteration and the most important one is to learn about different types of applications that can be used in retail industry. The researcher has learned about the problems in retail industry and he has learned how to design a solution for an industry. The researcher learned about different application development types that are being used in different industry zones and how those applications are helpful for their business. The researcher learned about the use of analytics application and CRM application in today’s business. The researcher has also learned about the use of various other applications in the retail application. The researcher has also learned more about the UI development and he has also developed the database for the application.

The researcher has learned lot of new procedures and concepts in performing a research. The researcher learned how to communicate with professionals and I have also learned about asking right questions to any professionals that matches my problem area. I have also watched video of many top company CEOs that helped me a lot in designing various other tools for the retail application. I have also learned integrating different applications for developing the main application. The researcher has mainly learned to follow a step-by-step procedure, which will help the researcher in his future activities. Other important thing that the researcher learned in this iteration is about documenting the whole work that the researcher has performed.

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