Business Plan to Transform the Kirana Store to Retail Industry

The real question is How to upgrade the technology of a 'Kirana' Store?

In general Retail Industry offers:

• Organized distribution of retail products
• More profitability for retail outlets
• Making available the products the customer actually wants.
• Listening to customer requirements
• The store layout for more freedom of choice

What can Kirana Store provide to the Supplier:

• Area details and customer buying behavior
• Low cost preference and options – based on the purchasing power of the customer
• Actual purchasing trends

The Solution - 

* Kirana Retailer and Supplier Online Network (KRSON) Software *

A Platform is made available for online transactions between Supplier and Kirana Store that provides:

• Online Ordering Service
• Kirana Store Inventory Management

Provides a Online Portal for Kirana Supplier for -

• Adding of products to catalog
• Inventory availability and costs
• New products and availability
• Receiving order and payment as per terms

Portal for Kirana Retailer -

• Ordering service
• Value add in Store Inventory Management
• Payment gateway - optional

Cost structure - 

• Tablet Device + Software costing approx. Rs. 10,000 is purchased by Kirana Store owner and Supplier  
• Each transaction costs is paid by a flat rate. The rate is variable and dependent on the number of suppliers and retail store owners that are using the service.

The Software architecture is based on advanced collaboration platform and does not need a specific software although it is possible to provide all features in one software that can enable the solution.

A solution is openerp – an open source solution. Check www.openerp.com for details.

The solution is designed in such a way that there could be potentially any software enabling the features that already have the capabilities mentioned in the architecture.

The Service will require a industry association endorsement to be acceptable and changeable for future enhancements and benefits. This is typical B2B application though the discussion is for its applicability to the Kirana Store and transform it to Global Stature.

Industrial internet - An Opportunity for more analytics sensible apps

The term Industrial Internet term is already not new. The primary idea being there are industrial devices that are on local network sending data to a controller - that's also on the internet. The challenge is to bring this data accessible and make sense of it. Hence the manufacturing industry has huge potential where many devices connected to the internet.

Additional reading material with a detailed study is can be found here.

To take an example as per the paper there is a 1% savings possible for Oil and gas industry. What does it really mean?

 

We can apply techniques such as web applications to the devices on internet (not just mobile devices but anything that can capture data) and provide its analytics as a web applications. – Think home appliance connected to your home wifi or work network.

Many apps are on the app store similar for IOS and other platforms.  Some of the use cases are data collection, device management, automation, control, analytics, predictive behaviors, as a computing power in the form of distributed information network. Many standards are already in place such as NMS and OPC that can enabled standardized access.

The analytics enables solutions for improving productivity. Details would depend on the actual device and what data is made available.

Further it is possible to provide private/public cloud with these devices connected to the internet for select set of users. These applications can enable to optimize and provide analytics and visualization for decision making. In nut shell each connected device in the industrial internet can support users from internet. The support could be reduced overhead, report ability, and grid computing capabilities. The more data collected and made available from these devices can make suggestions for further improvement in design and recommend trials. By adding these devices remote control is also possible.

There are benefits if these devices are online e.g. energy efficiency for a longer period of time.  The target platform can also enable the unified vision that many strive for.