A leading retail company faced significant operational inefficiencies due to the use of multiple disparate software applications and manual processes. Employees in the merchandising department often relied on Excel spreadsheets and isolated programs to manage sales, pricing, discounts, and product creation on the website. This fragmented approach led to data inconsistencies, collaboration difficulties, and a lack of streamlined processes.

To address these challenges, our client needed a unified platform to manage all these processes through a single, standardized interface. The goal was to consolidate these functions into one platform, making it easier for employees to perform their tasks efficiently and ensuring that all data was consistent and accessible.

Zoolatech was engaged to enhance and further develop the Retail Hub, a platform our client was already using in its MVP form. Our team was tasked with improving the platform, onboarding new applications, and building new features from scratch to meet the company’s growing needs.

The Retail Hub was designed to be a comprehensive platform that would centralize and automate our client’s merchandising operations. Initially, the MVP version of the Retail Hub was in place, and Zoolatech’s team focused on refining and expanding its functionality. We onboarded various existing and new applications onto the Retail Hub, providing our client’s teams with a unified interface to manage their processes.

Zoolatech’s team developed several key applications from scratch, including:

• Notifications system: Provides real-time notifications across the platform, ensuring that users are promptly informed of important updates and changes.
• Issue resolution tool: Enables employees to report and resolve incidents quickly. This tool aggregates issues, assigns them to the appropriate team members, and tracks their resolution history, replacing the older, manual email-based process.
• Task management platform: A critical component of the Retail Hub, this platform orchestrates tasks across different departments. It provides a unified interface for creating, managing, and tracking tasks.
• User management and permissions: The User Manager application handles user authentication and authorization. The platform integrates with Okta for secure user authentication, generating tokens stored in LocalStorage and used across all applications via the Authorization Header.

The platform is built using a microservices architecture with Kubernetes handling container orchestration. This ensures that each service operates independently, allowing for scalability and flexibility in managing different components. The platform also utilizes a microfrontend architecture, where each application within the Retail Hub operates as a separate frontend, integrated seamlessly into the overall user experience. All services are containerized, with ReactJS used for the frontend applications and NodeJS for the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layer.

Synchronous communication between services is handled via HTTP, ensuring real-time data exchange and interactions across the platform. For asynchronous communication, the platform relies on Kafka events, which are integrated via our client’s proprietary implementation called Proton.

The platform leverages AWS services for data storage and analysis. Data generated by the platform is stored in S3 and processed using AWS Athena. The Retail Hub uses this data to generate reports and visualizations, providing the company with real-time insights into their operations.

While most of the Retail Hub’s applications operate within our client’s VPN, some are accessible externally via Fastly, enabling remote users to interact with the platform securely.

The implementation of the Retail Hub has significantly improved the company’s operational efficiency. By consolidating multiple applications into a single platform, our client achieved:

• Unified operations: Streamlined processes across departments, reducing the time and effort required to manage merchandising operations.
• Enhanced collaboration: Improved collaboration among teams by providing a standardized interface for all tasks and operations.
• Scalability and flexibility: The microservices and microfrontend architecture allow for easy integration of new applications, ensuring the platform can scale with the company’s evolving needs.
• Real-time insights: Enhanced decision-making capabilities through real-time data analysis and reporting.
• Improved security: Secure user authentication and authorization mechanisms, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access specific features and data.

The Retail Hub has provided our client with a powerful tool to manage their merchandising operations more effectively. By unifying their processes and providing a single point of access for all relevant data and applications, the company has enhanced its ability to respond to market changes, improve collaboration among its teams, and deliver a better experience to its customers.