Online Ordering System
Summary
An online products ordering system was developed for a major US-based food network. The purpose of this project was to create a consumer portal that restaurants could use for online sales and marketing interactions with their customers.
Customer
 The customer is SIVA, a Florida corporation, creator of point-of-sale, kitchen, back office and operations intelligence software that use web technologies to improve operational efficiency and reduce the cost of technology ownership for multi-unit restaurant operations. Among its impressive customers is the largest casual dining chain in the world Darden Restaurants, owners of the Red Lobster and Olive Garden. Other customers include Restaurants Unlimited, Inc., Luby's and Legal Sea Foods.
Product Features
- User interface for Web-based ordering
- Marketing tools on the basis of user profiles and orders history
- Maintaining a database of restaurants
- Pick-up/delivery time selection (immediate and deferred)
- Menu item and price extraction from the central POS system
- Order export to the central POS system
- Online payment processing, including tip, taxes and delivery charges
- Order confirmation by email
- Marketing opt-in
- Dine-in waitlist signup
The system was implemented on the modular basis, with a recurrent phase-by-phase approach. The first phase provided the base functionality and an application appropriate to the needs of table service restaurants (capabilities for pick-up, curbside delivery and limited traditional delivery). Whereas subsequent versions provided advanced on-line ordering features needed by companies with extensive delivery and corporate catering businesses as well as incremental functionality for mobile phone-based ordering and for on-line marketing integrated with customer profiles and sales interactions.
Online Ordering Module
- Menus, prices, tax tables, customers, and other configuration/setup information will be automatically populated using an XML-based interface. An XML message will be defined for each major data type. A user interface will be built to enter any configuration data that is not automatically populated via the interface.
- A configuration user interface will provide the ability to set global preferences, and manage configuration data that is not directly available from iSIVA. A menu building utility will provide the ability to determine which items and locations they are shown on the web ordering menu.
- Web-based order entry screens will determine what the end user wants to order. The customer may order from the menu, based on a list of favorite items, or based on historical orders.
- On-line payment processing and interface will collect credit card information and securely communicate that information to a credit card interface.
- Order XML messages will be rendered once the order and payment have passed validation. Each message will be transmitted to a JMS that will forward it to downstream consumers of that information.
- Once the web ordering application receives the acknowledgement from the restaurant's store server, it will finalize the credit card transaction and display an order confirmation message to the user.
- A customer profile entry/update screen will allow the end user to enter identification information and preferences. Submitting changes to the profile form will result in XML messages. Each message will be transmitted to a JMS that will forward it to downstream consumers of that information, in this case the CRM module.
CRM Module
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A web ordering transaction logger will write all web-based transactions to a data storage location.
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A customer profile logger will write all customer profile XML messages to the database.
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Reports and queries can be run against customer order data to provide rapid retrieval of order history as well as providing administrative diagnostics and reconciliation between the web-order system and iSIVA system.
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Once the restaurant's store server receives and successfully stores the order, the restaurant will send an order status message (indicating order acknowledged) to the web ordering application. The CRM module will store this order status information with the CRM order history data.
Notification Engine
Tools and Technologies
Platform: MS Windows, Linux
Application Server: Jakarta Tomcat
Languages: Java
Database: Derby via JDBC
Technologies: ActiveMQ JMS, JUnit, JMeter, EMMA Code Coverage
Effort: 60 man-months
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