MKT 500 Final Project Milestone One Product Idea Guidelines.docx

MKT 500 Final Project Milestone One: Product Idea Guidelines
and Rubric
Overview: For the first milestone, choose an existing
organization from the list below and submit an idea for a new
product or service. This product or service idea
will be used to create your marketing plan for the final project.
If your idea is a product, describe the product, its functionality,
and how it works. If it is a service,
describe the service offering so that readers understand what
they would receive. Your product or service should address a
problem that is not currently being
sufficiently addressed by current solution providers, i.e., your
competition. This milestone is due in Module One.
Create a fictitious product or service for a company from the
following list:

Your submission should address the following:
y information:
o Company name, industry, traded name, stock symbol, publicly
traded stock exchange, mission, status, marketing reports, and
marketing domain
(use EDGAR, the SEC, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics sites
for reference)
ea:
o What problem does your product/service solve for the target
market (not you)? Would your target market say, “Yes, that is a
problem and no
one has solved it” about your product/service?
o What competitive advantages does your product/service offer?
o What challenges might you face in the marketing of this
product or service?
Ensure that you have adequately described your product or
service. By the time your product or service description is
written, the reader should understand and
be able to envision what you want to bring to market. If you

have a service description, the reader should know where you
are located, what your service offers,
and so on.
Rubric
Guidelines for Submission: Your paper must be submitted as a
2- to 3-page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-
point Times New Roman font,
one-inch margins, and APA formatting.
Critical Elements Proficient (100%) Needs Improvement (75%)
Not Evident (0%) Value
Main Elements Includes most of the main
elements and requirements
and cites many examples to
illustrate each element
Includes some of the main
elements and requirements
Does not include any of the
main elements and
requirements
60
Inquiry and Analysis Provides in-depth analysis that
demonstrates complete
understanding of some

concepts
Provides analysis that
demonstrates some
understanding of concepts
Does not provide in-depth
analysis
10
Integration and
Application
Most of the course concepts
are correctly applied
Some of the course concepts
are correctly applied
Does not correctly apply any of
the course concepts
10
Research Incorporates some scholarly
resources effectively that
reflect depth and breadth of
research
Incorporates very few scholarly
resources that reflect depth
and breadth of research
Does not incorporate scholarly
resources that reflect depth

and breadth of research
10
Writing
(Mechanics/Citations)
Minor errors related to
organization, grammar and
style, and citations
Some errors related to
Major errors related to
10
Total 100%
Running head: DEVELOP AN APPLICATION FOR
RETAILERS 1
DEVELOP AN APPLICATION FOR RETAILERS 43

Develop an Application for Retailers
Action Research Paper
Jaya Kumar Pitti
Wilmington University
IST 8101
Under the guidance of
Prof. Billy Machage
Table of Contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………
………………….. 6
Methodology…………………………………………………………
……………….... 10
Literature
Review………………………………………………………………
……… 13
Proposal…………………………………..…………………………
…………............ 17
First Iteration: Learn about Different Problems Underlying in
Retail Industry……… 17
Second Iteration: Learn about different ways of Application
Development…………. 17
Third Iteration: Comparing different Analytics and other
business process Applications for Retail
sector……………………………………………..…………………
…….……….. 17
Fourth Iteration: Finalizing right tools, technologies and
process to develop the Application..18

Fifth Iteration: Developing and Integrating the
Applications……………………………… 18
Retail Industry…...… 20
Plan……………………………………………………………………
……………….. 20
Action…………………………………………………………………
……………….. 21
Observe………………………………………………………………
………………… 22
Reflect…………………………………………………………………
……………….. 23
Development……………… 25
Plan……………………………………………………………………
……………. 25
Action…………………………………………………………………
……………. 26
Observe………………………………………………………………
……………… 27
Reflect…………………………………………………………………
……………. 29
business process Applications for Retail sector
…………..…............................................................................
................................. 31
Plan……………………………………………………………………
…………….. 31
Action…………………………………………………………………
…………….. 32
Observe………………………………………………………………
……………… 33
Reflect…………………………………………………………………
….…………… 35

process to develop the Application
…………………………………….…………………………………
….………...... 37
Plan……………………………………………………………………
……….……… 37
Action…………………………………………………………………
……………… 38
Observe………………………………………………………………
……………….. 39
Reflect
…………………………………………………………………
……………… 41
Iteration 5: Developing and Integrating the
Applications………………………….. 43
Plan……………………………………………………………………
…………….. 43
Action…………………………………………………………………
…………….. 44
Observe………………………………………………………………
……………… 45
Reflect…………………………………………………………………
…………….. 47
Learning
Summary………………………………………………………………
…… 49
References……………………………………………………………
………………. 51
Figure 1. Iterations
Representation………………………………………………………
….19
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.
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).
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.

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.
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:
Product
Product_ID
Integer
Product_NAME
Varchar
Product_DESCRIPTION
Varchar
Product_QUANTITY
Integer
Product_PRICE
Varchar

Product_TYPE
Varchar
Table 1: Product Table
Customer
Customer_ID
Integer
Customer_NAME
Varchar
Customer_CONTACT
Integer
Customer_ADDRESS
Varchar
Table 2: Customer Table
Bill
Bill_ID
Integer
Bill_DATE
Date
Bill_AMOUNT
Varchar
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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