Major Retailer Adopts SOA
Application
Description
- SOA and Web Services Application with a Java Point-of-Sale Client
Advantages
- Better inventory control
- Improved customer service
- Componentized, scalable, standards-based solution
- Ability to easily work with business partners
CLIENT BACKGROUND
This major retailer specializes in selling more than 24,000 brand-name and private-label automotive parts and accessories as well as offering on-site automotive service facilities. The company operates 595 stores and service centers in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and supports 21,000 employees and $2B in annual sales.
BUSINESS PROBLEM
This retailer needed to replace a mainframe character mode Point-of-Sale (POS) system which accessed many disparate merchandise, catalog, and sales audit systems. Wanting to grow their business, this retailer wanted a solution that would give them better control of their inventory and expenses and allow them to improve on the quality and speed of their customer service while providing the necessary integration to their legacy systems.
SOLUTION
Searching for a flexible IT strategy, with minimal business risk, this retailer adopted SOA as an architecture that offered the componentization, interoperability and scalability needed to achieve their business goals. By using standardized interfaces in an SOA solution, they were also able to significantly reduce the application and system complexity.
Prolifics experts built a JCA (Java Connector Architecture) foundation for accessing disparate back-end systems as well as providing a more robust capability to source products from neighboring stores, warehouses, and business partners easily and effectively. By use of this any-to any connectivity, the Web services foundation opens up their business processes to other established business trading networks.
With IBM WebSphere being used to host the Web services, the Web services handled POS retail processes such as item lookup, price lookup, tax code lookup and customer lookup. WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation and Process Choreographer were used to generate a BPEL microflow that handled all the post-sales retail activities such as updating inventory and interfacing with appropriate enterprise systems using Message Broker.
The JPOS (Java Point-of-Sale) client utilizes the Web services foundation to serve up specific vehicle and previous sales information of each customer from different sources, thereby improving store personnel productivity and customer service.
The ‘Shopper's Express’ application with its modular, enterprise service oriented architecture utilizes Web services as a way to decouple and integrate disparate systems. Built upon WebSphere, the agnostic architecture can utilize any front-end application, but leverage all existing business processes and assets, thereby increasing development productivity, scalability, and interoperability. The new network is now used as a trading network and greatly improves sourcing products between stores, warehouses, and business partners while increasing revenue.