Spicy Restaurant Mobile App - Solution For Building Larger Customer Base

The problem

Describe about the Business Leading Chain for Promising Industry.

Spicy Restaurant is a leading chain of restaurants that operate internationally. The business is primarily focused on delivering ‘take away' and ‘dine in' services to the customers. The business claims to deliver the best food to the customers. The restaurant industry is a very competitive but promising industry. Other than delivering good food, Spicy has adopted an innovative dining system to make its competitive edge over the competitors. Spicy is focused on making their customers delivering the best customer care service also (Baltzan et al., 2015).

The marketing and sales management department of the business is facing challenges to increase the sales due to the competition in the market. Hence, it wants to increase the sales through innovating marketing and promotion ideas. Mobile commerce is a growing domain and Spicy is interested in utilizing the mobile commerce platform to increase sales and building a loyal customer base.

Spicy is a well-established business that has a brand value. It needs to focus on the marketing efforts to bring more customers to the restaurants. The proposed solution to the problem is the development of a mobile app for the customers. The Internet has become a robust communication channel. Spicy can utilize the power of the Internet and mobile apps to open up to their existing customer base as well as bring new customers to the restaurants.

They want to put promotional offers like ‘Free meal' for a limited number of customers and asking them to fill a form for participation. Spicy will collect and store the customer details for future promotions. Other than that, the business can use low-cost and highly-effective digital marketing tools like social networking sites for the promotion of advertisements, offers and so on. They are also interested in focusing on the mobile app platform to reach to more customers.

The key features of the proposed mobile app are,

It will make the business visible and available to the customers for 24x7.

People generally carry mobile devices with them all the time of a day. Hence, the mobile platform will help the business to be available to the customers at their convenience. The customers won’t need to have access to a computer or laptop to use the app. A smartphone is enough to get connected.

It will help to collect customers’ demographics more conveniently through app permissions and collecting data from the mobile devices. For examples, the app can take permission to access Facebook details of a customer. Then it can use the permission to collect the ‘Friends’ of the customer from his/her Facebook profile and offer the customer to promote the business to the ;’Friends’ just by a single click.

Concept and Solution

The app will also help to build trust among the customers, communicating with the customers in real-time, building social recognition and business value.

Branding and loyalty development are two important features of the proposed app.

The mobile app will help the Spicy restaurant business to solve their current problem related to building a larger customer base and using the online platform for marketing and promotions. Deployment of the mobile app and integration of the app with the social networking platforms will help to solve the current business problems. The solution is viable as it is a cost effective solution for the business. There are a few risks associated with solution for using the online platform for the business, for example, the data privacy, security issues, and risks of adopting cloud computing platforms and so on. However, the risks can be mitigated with proper approach and change management process.  The app is targeted to increase the interactions and communication with the customers, leveraging customer demographic for the business. It will help the business to increase brand value and earning more revenue.

The target audience of the app is the customers. Customers are the primary and very important stakeholder of any business. In restaurant and hospitality businesses, customers are the pivotal point to make a business profitable. Spicy is aimed at delivering the best services to their customers in all possible circumstances. They want to make the process as transparent as possible for the customers. So, the app will be used to deliver information about their foods, price and quality details.

Customers will have the following benefits from the app,

• They can order food from the mobile app anytime. Hence, they can avoid long waiting lines and save their time.
• Foods can be ordered from home or any location. The delivery will be made to the requested location if it is within the servicing area of the business.
• The app will have menu off all dishes along with the description, images, and price and quality details.
• Customers can avail discounts and offered through the app while ordering food and making payments.
• Customers can get assistance in real-time from the mobile interface. The app will have an interactive map to help customers in finding the nearby Spicy restaurants while placing an order, locating the delivery location by pinning in on the map and so on.

Staffs are another group of stakeholders who will also have positive impacts from the deployment of the mobile app for the business. Staffs will also have an exclusive portal in the app. They can resolve their problems related to the service and delivery by communicating with other staffs or by accessing the manager channel. Customers can rate the service and that will have an impact on the staffs who worked in the order. For example, the rating system may have categories for rating, like Food, Cooperation, and service of the waiters, Delivery service, hospitality and so on. If a customer rates good for food, then the staffs who prepared the food will also have a good rating. The rating system will help to keep the staffs motivated and dedicated to their work all the time.

Key Features of the App

The development and deployment of the proposed mobile app will help to align the business and IT of the Spicy restaurant strategically. Such alignment will help to automate partial business operations and make the process more cost-effective (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

The proposed app will help the business to connect with the customers, improving brand value and customer relationship management services. The app will also help the business to improve the productivity of the staffs. Hence, the app will help the business to grow by utilizing the current information and communication technologies. Another benefit for the business will be (Laudon and Laudon, 2011),

• Establishment of a stronger brand
• Increasing and maintaining the customer’s trust on the brand and the business
• Driving traffic and converting the visitors into customers.
• Building effective network like affiliate networks, business network and so on.
• Utilizing the digital marketing tools and social media for promotion of the business.
• Communicating with the customers online and over the app or over the social media
• Integrating the business platform with social media platforms.

Development of the proposed app will require a suitable IT infrastructure for app design and development. The infrastructure requirements include,

The app will be developed for the Android and iOS based smartphones. Hence, for the Android version of the app will require the Android Studio or the Eclipse for Android development and deployment platform. The Android Studio platform is very large application compared to the Eclipse platform. But, the Android Studio platform is very rich with the features and functionalities for Android App development. For the development of the App for iOS, it can use the Swift based platform. Otherwise, there are various cross-platform app development solutions that offer development of an app for multiple OS from the same platform. ‘Good Barber' is an example of such platform that supports Android and iOS app development from the same development platform (Baltzan et al., 2015).

Android app can be developed using Java as a programming language. The iOS based app development can be done using Swift as a programming language. The development process will require tools like mock-up tools, prototyping tools and so on.

Cloud computing platforms can help the app development and deployment in various ways. For example,

The app development platforms and most of the cross-platform app development environments are available as cloud-based solutions. It is usually offered as PaaS or Platform as a Service Solution.

The app can be hosted and deployed on a cloud platform. It will offer more scalability, fault tolerance, and availability. The business can outsource partial or complete infrastructure to some third party. In that case, it will have a cost-effective infrastructure solution.

The app development will follow some suitable software development and testing strategies. Agile strategies are suitable for mobile app development for various reasons,

The agile approach will focus on development and delivery of the solution, within the minimum possible time by maintaining all quality standards and fulfilling the requirements.

Business case

The focus in given on delivery of the solution rather than documentation etc.

It takes an incremental and iterative approach to development the app. Hence, the risks are reduced greatly and the app goes through multiple instances of review by the client. So, the chances of failure to meet the requirements are very low (Baltzan et al., 2015).

It is flexible to allow changes and alteration during the development process.

The testing strategy will have unit testing and integration testing.

A beta version of the app will be realized first for checking the feedbacks from the end users and testing.

The final version will be release after making the changes.

Internationalization of the app for global market of the business needs to consider the following points,

Language is a barrier for internationalization of any business. Even though the English language is followed in almost all countries of the world, but that is available for business communication. To reach to the local people or the prospective customers, the app must have support for multiple languages other than the English language so it can cover the maximum of its targeted audience (Laudon and Laudon, 2011). For example, Spanish is another important language that must be supported by the business.

The business process is distributed as there are multiple business units at various places in the world. The marketing and promotion should be centralized to bring the best out of it.

There are various legal rules and regulations available in different countries. The business needs to consider and follow all of such regulations, rules and follow the standards.

Social networks will be an important part of the proposed app and the marketing and promotion solution for the business.

The platform must be connected to the social profiles of the business to bring the traffic from the connected social platforms

Testimonials and reviews posted by the real cutovers is an important marketing and promotion tool. Such content is highly valuable for a business to gain visibility on the online platform and it also attracts other customers.

Social networks can be utilized to connect and interact with the customers by answering their queries, acknowledging their feedbacks, posting time to time about the offers of the business. To promote seasonal and special offers, the social network platforms are very useful (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

Mobile SEO for mobile commerce must be utilized and followed to avail the benefits of the digital marketing campaigns.

Target audience

The risk management approach will be focused on the privacy, security, confidentiality, ethical issues related to mobile commerce and online platforms.

Privacy of the personal data of the customers must be protected. The business will work on building and using a database of customer details. However, it will require compliances with the data privacy rules. The data must be protected and secured by the organization so that no unauthorized access is possible to the data. It must ask for the permission explicitly from the customers to send newsletters and promotional emails to them and using their data for marketing (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

Security of the computing infrastructure to be used by the business must have proper implementations of the data security solutions like firewalls, secure servers, encryptions, secure payments and ordering system and so on. It must ensure that there are no security loopholes and the unauthorized access is not possible. The payment solution must follow the protocols of secure communications.

The business must also follow the ethical issues related to accessing and using digital data. For example, it must not disclose the customers’ data without permissions from the customers.

The deployment and integration strategies will cover the roll-out plan, integration with the legacy systems mainly.

There will be actually three phases of the roll-out. The planning is,

To release the beta version for the customers first.

To release the beta version with the additional features for the staffs and making the app available for the staffs and the customers.

Based on the feedbacks of the stakeholders, especially the staffs and the customers, the final release of the app will be done with all features like support for multiple languages and so on.

The app must follow the usability accessibility and user interface related issues.

There will be a 24x7 technical support available for resolving technical issues related to the app.

The integration phase will connect the app with the existing information systems of the business.

Development and deployment of the proposed mobile app will require some major changes in the current business process. It will require more employees with specialized skills. The existing employees also need to learn the basic skills for working in an IT-driven business. For example, the new business process will require working 24x7. Hence, the work will be done in mostly multiple shifts. Resistance from the employees is a possibility here as it will make them feeling insecure about their job (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

There must be a well-planned change management process focused on,

A well-defined change management process

Communications between the staffs and the management and other stakeholders. Communications can help to keep stakeholders informed and understand the requirements and changes in the business process.

Legacy systems are the information systems running for business from long ago and mostly collects transactional business data. The database management systems are good examples of legacy systems. The mobile app will be deployed over some cloud solution and it will require a middleware to be implemented between the legacy systems and the mobile app platform. The customizations of the mobile app and the data conversations between the app and the legacy systems and the databases will be handled by the middleware (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

The database integration will be focused on collecting transactional and operation data. The legacy database system must be extended to collect, store and process customer demographics, unstructured data from the social media platform and the legacy system.

Enterprise Data Integration or the EDI will help to integrate and operate the existing and the proposed information infrastructure of the business.

The app will be maintained for,

• Helping the users to get help in using the app.
• Fixing the accessibility issues if reported
• Fixing the reported bugs
• Monitoring the performance of the app
• Monitoring the performance of the digital marketing campaigns.

The future opportunities of the app can be,

Extending the functionalities of the app through collaboration with the supporting industry.

Integrating features and functions for affiliate marketing.

Extending the number of supported mobile payment solutions.

Offering different types of delivery services based on the priorities of the customers. Giving more choices to the customers will help to bring customers from different backgrounds (Laudon and Laudon, 2011).

It is recommended for the Spicy restaurant is to develop and deploy the proposed mobile app over a suitable cloud platform. It needs to follow the strategies for development, internationalization, and promotion of the app as suggested in the report.

Mobile commerce is a growing field of e-commerce and the mobile technologies are also improving. Adoption of the mobile technologies and mobile platform for business will extend its current customer base, building a network of loyal customers and expanding the business internationally.

References

Baltzan, P., Fisher, J. & Lynch, K. 2015. Business-Driven Information Systems, McGraw-Hill Education.

Laudon, K. C. & Laudon, J. P. 2011. Management information systems, Prentice Hall New Jersey.