Miners Inc. is a privately held company that owns and operates a chain of grocery stores. Miners stocks many items that comes from its own distribution center. Every Miners store would have to manually place a paper-based replenishment order to the distribution center. As the number of stores and overall number of items is growing, the manual process is becoming inefficient.
Miners collaborated with Smart IS International to improve this process. Utilizing its deep knowledge of retail industry, the supply chain processes and years of development experience; Smart IS developed a scalable web/mobile "Order Guide" for Miners. This system tightly integrates with their ERP and Warehouse Management Systems; and is designed around Miners ordering processes with a goal to increase efficiency, save time and resources, minimize ordering mistakes, and capture real-time inventory data.
Smart IS' Business Analyst and Process Improvement consultants worked directly with Miners Users and Key Stakeholders to gain an understanding of the overall business needs as well as the functional, technical and administrative challenges.
Leveraging our Rapid Development methodology; a working prototype was developed to ensure the new mobile interface is user friendly and efficient to work inside the store. The team from Smart IS tested the prototype side-by-side with Users and collected valuable feedback; incorporated in the final delivery. The prototyping exercise engaged the users early in the process, ensuring acceptance and buy-in for the final product.
