RETAIL CLOUD SOLUTION

BACKGROUND

Xeenius has worked with a major consulting firm on a number of projects over the years. One such project is most representative of the skill levels our team is able to perform in system integration projects related to Oracle.

The retailer was interested in converting their legacy mainframe-based applications into a modern system to better complement their current and future growth for the next 10 years. With over 9400 stores nationwide and worldwide locations, it was imperative to choose a system that would provide them a service-oriented, modern system easy for franchisees to understand and utilize.

Accounting System Modernization:

The Business Transformation project labeled Accounting System Modernization for Franchisee Management uses Oracle Retail and Oracle Procurement and Compensation to effectively re-architect the mainframe based legacy solutions into modern and emerging technologies. The Retailer wanted their Franchisee Management process to be automated and brought online via a web portal so the following advantages could be leveraged –

  • Streamlined processing for better transparency and line-of-sight processing
  • Improved speed, accuracy franchisee management
  • Ease of use for franchisees, as well as corporate management
  • Efficient sharing and transformation of data across internal and 3rd party applications
  • Cost effective transformatIon

The retailer engaged the major consulting firm as the overall Systems Integrator to manage and implement the new solution. Xeenius was engaged as the niche technology partner by the consulting firm to handle all the application integration which included architecture, design, development, testing and deployment of 300+ integrations across 22 different business applications, affiliate programs and 3rd party applications. Xeenius provided end-to-end planning, design, execution, testing and support of the project integration. (Xeenius was chosen to execute this project because our team had executed a similar project at a major retailer in Ohio successfully.)

Xeenius Contributions to the Project:

  1. Project Management

Xeenius worked closely with the consultants teams to establish the vision and goals for the project as it pertains to integration. Xeenius executed the following activities as part of project management:

  • Development of the integration program plan (the client had a pre-established project management methodology along with strict protocols around change orders, technical accesses, deployment procedures that needed to be interwoven.)
  • Development and assignment of teams, including a myriad of partners and retailer personnel
  • Daily issue resolution plan and execution to reduce and eliminate bottlenecks

2.    Communication:

Communication management on this project translated into systematic reporting on project status, updates, and communications with clients, partners, senior management and team members. The communication management helped ensure resources were properly allocated to meet necessary policies, procedures and execution.

  1. Design and engineering:

Xeenius developed an overall architecture strategy and the implementation roadmap for application integration. The approach laid the foundation to migrate all the legacy mainframe based point-to-point integrations between various lines of business and third-party applications to a modern services-oriented  architecture model. The architecture goal of transitioning their IT from a file and batch processing environment to a more real-time services and messaging-based environment to support both current and future needs was achieved in a systematic and phased manner. The solution developed and approved included the following technologies:

  • Oracle SOA Suite
  • Oracle Service Bus
  • Oracle Data Integrator
  • webMethods B2B
  • Oracle Databases
  • pre-packaged Oracle Business Intelligence Applications (OBIA) Financial Analytics application
  • a custom-built Retail Analytics solution with defined data sources from DRM, Oracle Retail, and Oracle EBS.
  1. Integrated systems development:

As part of the ASI, Xeenius developed the integration strategy for the retailer to decommission their mainframe based legacy applications and move into Oracle based modern technology. We established the architecture and implementation roadmap for integration across 22+ applications (internal, external, cloud and 3rd party). The architecture facilitated seamless exchange of information using various modes of communications that includes web services, messaging, event based messaging, B2B-EDI and file-based integration.

From a business process automation and customer facing portal perspective, Xeenius BPM architects developed workflow based business process automation to streamline and automate the franchisee contract and onboarding process using K2 technology stack on .NET.

  1. System deployment:

System Integration Testing was deployed on the system after testing. Xeenius leads  went through various stages of testing uncover dependencies with other implementation partners and developed a robust schedule to deploy the solution with minimal impact to the existing business operations.

  1. Training:

We prepped for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cycles. We typically tend to use UAT cycles to familiarize our end users with the system and use the feedback to build end user training material. We worked closely with the end-user training partner to provide user feedback and help with the development of training material.