Retail

The Natural Wood Floor Company - Case Study

The Natural Wood Floor Company identified the need for a new website as their existing website was no longer cutting edge and traffic on the site was down and, as such, approached Linear Blue to help them create a new on-line vision alongside the database project that was already under way.

From the start of the project it was a requirement that the website work as closely as possible with FileMaker to allow the site administratior to control the site using the functionality of FileMaker as a management tool. It was decided that anything which the Natural Wood Floor Company would need to change on a regular basis would be controlled through the new FileMaker system – this meant the site administrators would have control over the site’s content and would also be using only one system to control both the company database as well as the website.

One of the major requirements of the new site was that it would work as a source for new enquiries for the Natural Wood Floor Co. - as such, the site was built to be fully search engine friendly. A full SEO campaign was undertaken during the site build and is also ongoing since the site has been made live. At present almost 80% of the site traffic is coming from Search Engines.

Force4 Chandlery - Case Study

Force4 Chandlery approached Linear Blue with the remit to design and develop a brand new sales order processing system to manage the sales, stock and delivery aspects of their multi-faceted business. Not only did they need a system that could manage the standard requirements of a mail-order SOP system, but also with custom field data and complex management reporting. In addition to unique purchase order requirements Force4 also needed a system that could run as Point-of-Sale in their shops.

Linear Blue designed a completely bespoke sales order processing system to meet the exact needs of Force4, implementing it throughout the mail order side of the business. The next step was to implement the system in the Force4 shops. The main objective was to allow all the shops and the head office to share information between them; the problem existed that if a shop lost Internet connection the system must not go down or they would not be able to sell anything at the tills. To answer this issue we designed a system that could operate stand alone in the shops and then synchronise data as required. The system could also intelligently store any data in a buffer if the network connection was lost and then automatically send it once the connection came back.

Another key element of the shop based system was its ability to run as a point-of-sale unit, complete with cash-draw, till display and receipt printer. Utilising FileMaker Pro as a development platform for the system, we were able to integrate various hardware and software technologies to create a unique sales environment.