Web MIS
Overview
Benetton is a leading player in the fashion garments sector in India.
It operates a large number of franchisee run shops. It also has a number of
company owned ships. Its sales people are constantly in the market capturing the
feedback on sales & requirements of the various shops. The main inputs required
by them are the stock levels in various shops / warehouse and the actual sales
figures of the shops.
The objective of this project was to develop a software that will allow the
management & the marketing (field staff) to manage the sales more effectively &
profitably, while providing the required level of data analysis & manipulation
capability to the end-users.
The marketing staff at the head office plans the range and decides the price
revisions. The style master is uploaded by the marketing/IT staff on a need basis.
Benetton has a warehouse in Delhi. The receipts at the warehouse & the
dispatches to various shops are entered into the systems there. The warehouse
staff upload the daily receipts & dispatch data on the web.
Project Title
Web MIS for Marketing
Client
Benetton, India (Fashion Apparel)
Technologies
.NET using ASP.NET & C#. SQL Server
used as RDBMS. Browser based. Web
services for data export & import
Architecture
n-tier with separate layers for
presentation, business logic, data
access & database API
The system enables the shops to upload the daily data on the internet – while ensuring that no major change is
required in the existing software running in the shops.
Two web services have been developed. One of them extracts the data from the POS installed at the shops and
uploads the data at the FTP locations. The second one polls the FTP locations, validates the data and imports it
into the main reporting engine. A web-site like interface enables the marketing staff to log from anywhere (even
cyber-cafes) and view the latest reports. These reports can be viewed on-screen, printed and exported to PDF /
Excel formats. Even the underlying data can be exported.
Copyright © KMG Infotech (Pvt) Limited, India. All Rights Reserved.
www.kmgin.com
Architecture
The system uses a comprehensive n-tier framework for the tools with presentation, business logic & data access
logic encapsulated into objects. In addition, windows / web services have been built for exposing required
functionality to external systems.
The framework is outlined below,
Sample Outputs
As an Excel file
As a PDF file
As an on-screen display
Copyright © KMG Infotech (Pvt) Limited, India. All Rights Reserved.
www.kmgin.com
KMG Role
KMG has developed these applications from scratch and continues to play a very important role in the successful
enhancement, customization and implementation of the application. The following summarizes KMG roles:
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Project Management: The project is managed by a KMG Project Manager with experience in handling
projects based on the detNET technologies
Coding Standards & Conventions: KMG has developed a set of detailed coding standards based on its
experience and the best-practices advised for dotNET n-tier object oriented applications. All development
& support work is based on these. This ensures that any changes in the development team do not hamper
the continuity or affect the quality of work
Coordination: Proven communication processes ensure that both the onsite (Client’s own) as well as the
offshore (KMG) teams work in tandem to meet the deadlines.
Off-shore Development: The offshore development & support team consists of experienced programmers
led by a senior team leader. Each member is an expert professional adept in the appropriate development
tools.
Quality Audit: Regular audits and code reviews are done by the Offshore Quality Analyst to ensure the
quality and standards of the project. Peer & project manager reviews are also undertaken to ensure
adherence to coding standards. The focus of the quality audit is to deliver code that is elegant as well as
efficient.
Change Management Process: A web-based issue-cumchange management tool is used for communicating the changes
to the off-shore team. The change requests are analyzed by the
KMG business analysts and an effort estimate sent to the client.
Once the effort has been approved, the changes are assigned to
the team.
Status Reporting and Communication: KMG Project
Management ensures that accurate weekly status reports
reach the client’s Project Management team. This helps
keep both the teams updated on the current status of the
project.
KMG Value Addition
The internal IT team at Benetton is a very small team, basically involving in managing the MIS process rather
than building new applications. The success of this project proved the capabilities of KMG to Benetton.
KMG is now a preferred vendor for Benetton and has been assigned the support for other systems developed by
other companies. Thus the KMG setup has become a virtual ‘Benetton’ offshore unit.
Using the KMG team has enabled their internal IT resources to focus on the client interactions & plan for future
enhancements / new systems.
Copyright © KMG Infotech (Pvt) Limited, India. All Rights Reserved.
www.kmgin.com