“SkillNet designed and implemented a bespoke mobile check-in application for James Avery that allows stores to better manage customer queues. This application allows customers and store personnel to maintain social distancing practices and adhere to COVID-19 regulations.”
James Avery Artisan Jewelry is a vertically integrated, family owned company located in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. They are a multi-channel retailer with 94 James Avery stores in four states. Their jewelry is also available in more than 215 Dillard’s stores in Texas and in 28 additional states; and nationwide through JamesAvery.com. Their jewelry is crafted in Texas workshops in Comfort, Hondo and Kerrville with the finest materials sourced worldwide.
On March 18th, James Avery Artisan Jewelry temporarily shut their retail stores to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Select stores reopened on May 22, in accordance with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recommended health protocols.
“We’ve missed our customers over the past eight weeks and we’re ready to begin calling some of our retail associates back to work after extensive furloughs in March,” James Avery CEO John McCullough said in a media release. “We’ve heard from our customers that they are ready to come back to our stores and we want them to know their shopping experience will be different as we continue to monitor safety protocols and adapt to the current situation.”
Each store is strictly following state guidelines as well as any additional local or county requirements for reopening in the community.
“Care, concern and safety of associates and guests is a cornerstone of our business and we remain diligent as we work to reopen our retail stores,” McCullough said.
With the reopening of the stores, James Avery needed an easy to use yet enterprise ready mobile application to help them manage and maintain social distancing in their stores per state regulations regarding occupancy limits.
Their initial solution to address the issue, was to simply break out scraps of paper and give out numbers like in a deli. Of course, this experience was far from ideal as it wasn’t in alignment with their corporate culture and brand. James Avery prides themselves on the customer experience they offer and a hastily scribbled number on a scrap of paper just didn’t make sense. There had to be a better way to manage the customer queue to ensure that everyone in the store felt safe and not bunched up next to one another.
SkillNet’s approach to developing a bespoke mobile check-in application started with multiple functional design workshops. The result of these collaborative workshops was a series of Agile user stories that defined the benefits of the mobile check-in application. Then, the SkillNet team designed an enterprise architecture that securely integrated all the data points required by the user stories. The backend was built using Spring Boot in a Docker container.
As James Avery rolls out their bespoke mobile check-in application, store associates and managers are finding it very easy to use with little to no training. The application is helping stores to manage and maintain their customer queues during busy times keeping customer, and themselves, feeling safe as they shop for artisan jewelry from James Avery.
By keeping the development process open and transparent to James Avery, SkillNet was able to produce an application that exceeded initial expectations. Using Agile methodologies kept all stakeholders in the loop at all times and made sure that the solution not just met current requirements, but as an enterprise class application on a modern architecture, it is ready to adjust quickly and easily as new requirements arise.
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