Sales Buddy

Sales buddy is an app which automates the inventory process of mini marts.

Manual inventory leads to time consumption and less productivity as well as theft sometimes, because of the time and effort given to it. It's a major problem minimarts and smaller stores are faced with. If smaller shops are given the tools to quickly run their shops wisely, it’s a better situation for everyone involved and would also help reduce cost, saving them from hiring more hands and also exempt assumption of available stocks.

Also, inventory analysis could open more doors to data analytics of that inventory, products that go unused, are purchased more than needed, small store owners could be in control of this data and given the tools to run like bigger more efficient stores.

It is important for businesses to know the amount of stock they have at hand at a particular time, as well as evaluate the particular items that are mostly asked for and those that customers rarely ask about so they do not run at a loss.

Inventory includes both finished products, work-in-process (products in various stages of completion), and products to be used to make new sales items. Inventory also shows if a business as high turnover or not.

Inventory is a valuable business asset.

Mini Marts in Nigeria.

To effectively optimize the activities of mini marts in Nigeria.

May 2020- June 2020

My team and I conducted interviews with a few shop owners in Nigeria and we observed that most shop owners did their inventory manually and it was not effective enough. They had a lot of pain points such as

·Staff are not efficient with stock taking

·It consumes a lot of time

·Error in records

·Difficulty in management

·Automatic methods don’t work

·Staff gets exhausted.

·Lack of accuracy sometimes

·Theft on the part of the staff

·Would the app require data?

·How accurate will the records be?

·For non learned person, will they be able to operate it?

·We believe that by creating the inventory app for store owners, we will help them keep stock of the number of goods in their stores.

·We will know the hypothesis is valid when we see a decline in sales losses accrued by the store owners due to error in records keeping.

·As a shop owner I want to be able to take automated inventory to ease the stress of taking stock and to balance my account

·As a store owner I want to be able to take automated inventory for time management

·As a grocery store manager I want to be able to take automated inventory to make my job easier and to monitor activities carried out easily

·As a store owner I want to be able to take automated inventory so that it will save me the cost of hiring another inventory officer

·As a store owner I want to take an automated inventory so that stock taking will be faster and accurate

·As a store owner I want to take an automated inventory to know my best selling items

·As a store owner I want to take an automated inventory to know when goods are about to finish

·Consistency in records: at the long run, a business without proper and accurate records tends to fail at the end, with the use of an inventory app, it is assured that there would be efficiency on the part of users as well as up to date and correct records.

·Time management: Time is a valuable asset in life, for a business owner, this contributes to the success or failure of the business. An inventory app in this case would focus on helping business owners manage time effectively so as to focus on other aspects of their business.

·Productivity: a user in this case would be able to actively monitor the inflow and outflow of items as well as items that would need to be reviewed due to really low request from existing and prospective customers.

·Visibility: After the evaluation of preceding ideas generated from brainstorming by the team, the proposed idea ticked the box of the technical possibility of building the app.

·Desirability: From the interviews that were conducted as well as the secondary research that was carried out, it showed that larger percentages are open to the idea.

·Viability: For the development of any business owner, inventory is one of the key important factors to be considered, it’s an asset to the business.

Link: https://www.figma.com/file/bjXNxt0m7gO4NGPOsaJV00/Inventory-App?node-id=0%3A1

Link: https://www.figma.com/file/bjXNxt0m7gO4NGPOsaJV00/Inventory-App?node-id=0%3A1