Ivano Baroni, Sonia Bergamaschi, Laura Po: An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade. WEBIST 2013, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, Aachen, Germany, 8-10 May, 2013, pages.519-526

1. An iPad Order Management
System for Fashion Trade
Ivano Baroni, Sonia Bergamaschi, Laura Po
Department of Engineering “Enzo Ferrari”,
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia,
ITALY
https://www.dbgroup.unimo.it/fashiontouch

2. • Quix s.r.l. is a software house located near Modena founded in November
2000 as a web company, now it offers a set of products that cover the
specific needs of public and private sectors. The main application areas
are enterprise portal, document management, information systems,
business intelligence.
• Quix company has a close connection with the DBGROUP of the University
of Modena and Reggio Emilia whereby often collaborates to study new
technologies and applications.
• The analysis and development of the App started in 2012 during the
internship at Quix of Ivano Baroni
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

3. Fashion industry and mobile tablets
• In 2011 a 38% growth of e-commerce in the Italian
fashion industry
• The interest of brands in applications of mobile
marketing and services increases of 129% in 2011
(osservatori.net’s study, 2012)
• Mobile devices are the emerging markets that will
drive growth and surpass PCs for online access
(IDC prediction, 2013)
• Emotional factors caused by the adoption of
mobile devices play an important role (Platzer,
2009)
• Users have showed a high attachment towards
mobile services and possibilities these devices
offer (Meschtscherjakov, 2009)
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

4. Why an App for the Fashion
Industries?
• The area near Modena is crowded of Fashion Industries
• 500 companies in the district of
Carpi with highly specialized
production in the textile-clothing
sector
• This area is one strategic zones
in the international fashion
system
• The clothing industry gained
importance in this area since
1950
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
The consortium
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

5. What we already have: the OMS
• An OMS (Order Management System) is a
software product for sales force automation
(SFA) used in a number of industries for order
entry and processing. Orders can be received
from businesses, consumers, or a mix of both,
depending on the products.
• Offers and pricing may be done via catalogues,
websites, or broadcast network
advertisements.
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

6. Why a Mobile App?
• Traditionally, an agent visits the customers with a paper
catalogue, the physical products of the collection, and writes
down orders by hand.
• By using an OMS agents can place online orders using the
web application. However, in order to complete an online
order you must have a computer, and a stable internet
connection.
• Actually, the connection is not always available and reliable
because some customers might be located in remote places.
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

7. Fashion Touch
• an iOS (iPAD) application for defining off-line
orders for sales force of fashion industries
• one of the first Italian mobile app for
managing orders in the Fashion Trade
• a mobile version of a web Order Management
System(OMS) developed by the
softwarehouse Quix s.r.l. for Fashion Trade
companies
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

8. OMS, ERP and Fashion Touch
Communications
• OMS web application meets
the company sales force
needs of having a centralized
and automated collecting
orders system connected to
the ERP
Advantages of using an OMS:
• The chance to conduct sales
analysis in real time.
• The Fashion OMS can be
integrated with any ERPs. The
integration process usually
takes place through export of
data in csv file
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Fashion OMS - Technical specifications
-Java Web Application built on the
Apache Struts 2 framework
-Central Authentication Service(users
single sign-on authentication)
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

9. Fashion Touch in brief
• Fashion Touch is used by the fashion agents that sell products of
one or more brands in a more or less wide geographical area.
• By using Fashion Touch, agents rely on :
– An up-to-date catalog of multimedia content
– High-resolution images (the quality is much better then the quality of
images on a paper catalog)
– An OMS aligned with the ERP information
– The option to define orders in offline mode
– A step-by step procedure of customer, line and season selection
– An easy access to customer information and geo-localization
– A wide set of functionalities for drafting and editing seasonal orders:
• custom keyboard to simplify and speed up the process of order entry;
• functionalities of viewing and editing the individual row order in details
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

10. Analysis - Development - Use
• Adopted Technology: Appcelerator Titanium
VS PhoneGap
• Development: Architecture and functionalities
of the App
• Use: A video demonstration of the App
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

11. Appcelerator Titanium VS PhoneGap
Appcelerator Titanium
• combines source code with a
JavaScript interpreter into an
app package
• supports access to a wide set of
native features and
functionalities
• can be extended with visual
components
• the gap between Titanium and
a pure native app is reduced
approaching to zero
• only available on the most
popular mobile platforms: iOS,
Android and Windows Mobile
PhoneGap
• a web-based solution
• utilize HTML5 standards
• ensures a wide portability on
tablets and mobile platforms
• native source code and libraries
for several device platforms
• template for creating native
smartphone apps
• the quality of GUI will vary
based on the quality of the web
view and rendering engine
platform
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

12. The Choice of Appcelerator Titanium
MOTIVATIONS
• The target device was the iPad (no need for strong interplatform functionalities)
• The creation of the graphical interfaces need a lower time
than the estimated development using web-based tools
• Titanium guaranteed the best compromise between quality
and speed of software development and interoperability of
different devices
• Titanium can be extended with free or paid modules
available on its Marketplace. In the Fashion Touch App are
actually included two of these modules and another one is
intended to be used in the next future
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

13. Architecture
• Titanium
guidelines of
good
programming MVC (Modelling
View Controller)
pattern for web
application
development
• The modules
have been
implemented
according to the
task that they
have to perform
in the App
UI Manager
Synch UI
Customer UI
Order UI
Business Logic
Order Manager
Synch
Manager
Customer
Manager
Season
Manager
Line
Manager
Product
Manager
Price
Manager
Resources Manager
DB Manager
Filesystem Manager
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Network Manager
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

14. DBMM - issues
The DBMM uses SQLLite database engine and faced
several issues:
• The database schema of the web application was very
complex and difficult to replicate on a mobile device:
this highlighted a problem of choosing which data to
import into the App and which data to omit
• The web application database included different data
types while SQLite supports only few ones
• The type and amount of data stored in the App
database have to allow maximum optimization in
terms of performance when synchronizing with the
server database and using it within the application
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

15. DBMM - operative choices
• The adoption of JSON (Javascript Object Notation) as the data
format. JSON, text-based open standard, is based on:
– a collection of name/value pairs
– an ordered list of values
JSON’s basic types are number, string, boolean, array, object and null.
• Simplification of the App database schema
– only subset of tables are included in the App
– for each table only the data strictly necessary for the needs of the App
has been selected: the columns needed to perform queries are
reported, plus a generic column consisting of a JSON object containing
the rest of the data.
• Integrating data types was a convenience choice to improve
the speed of the application development.
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

16. GUI
• Fashion Touch GUI is divided into three
sections:
– synchronization
– customers management
– orders management
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

17. Synchronization
• Synchronization allows to keep the device data consistent with
data of the OMS server
• essential to avoid the inclusion of orders on old data, i.e. items
that are no longer available for the current season
• through a process of authentication, it is possible to download
the data that the user is authorized to access (the customers,
the seasons and lines for which agent can make orders),
diversifying access to the data catalogue for each agent
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

18. Customers
The Customer section
• shows the complete list of clients
• displays the detailed information for each customer
• gives the possibility of sending e-mail and geolocalizing them
• manages blocked or warning customers – for control
purposes, the fashion company wants to block the
order emission for insolvent customers, the App has
been refined in order to block the creation of an order
or to advise about a critical situation regarding a
customer
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

19. Order Generation Process
New order
creation
Season and
customer
selection
Order
transmission
Customer
signature
Brand/Line
selection
Order review
Catalog navigation
& Item selection
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

20. Additional features
• custom keyboard and “mini” keyboard - the
creation of a custom keyboard and a simplified
keyboard supplies better usability;
• “tap” feature - an easy and quick feature to
increase the quantity on a field, at each tap the
amount increases by one, thus avoiding the use
of the keyword
• box management - a box is a predefined mix of
items for the same article in different size; an
article can be purchased in quantities chosen by
the user, or in boxes
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

21. Video exemplification
• 3 minutes
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

22. Conclusion
• The app optimizes the process of orders acquisition by
sales agents working in the fashion industry
• The application is currently being used by three
companies with a network of around 200 agents
• The App has become a point of strength among Quix’s
products
• Fashion Touch participated at the Smau Mob App
Awards (Bologna, Italy, 2012), by competing in the
Task Specific category. It has been ranked between the
four finalists among hundreds of participants
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

23. Future Work
• The App is continuously updated and integrated
with new features following the clients’ needs
• Search for articles by reading bar codes (this
functionality will be available thanks to a module
from the Titanium Marketplace), the agent rather
than navigate the standard catalogue, scans a
barcode through the camera of the iPad (which
identifies an item in a particular colour), the
reading and identification of the code redirects
the agent towards the insert page where he has
to insert the quantity for that item and so on.
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013

24. THANK YOU!
• This presentation and all information about
the App will be available on
https://www.dbgroup.unimo.it/fashiontouch
• The App can be downloaded from the
iTunes Store
For receiving the test parameters please contact Quix s.r.l. www.quix.it
An iPad Order Management System for Fashion Trade
Laura Po - DIEF, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ITALY
Special Session BA
WEBIST 2013