BIG LOTS - 2008 JBOSS INNOVATION AWARD WINNER

Category: Emerging and Leading Edge Technologies
Winner:Big Lots
Submitted by: Big Lots Application Architecture Team
Industry: Retail
Geography: Columbus, OH

Overview
Big Lots used the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Seam to develop and implement an interactive Inventory Management System usable across a variety of devices (Point-of-Sale, mobile handheld, and back-office server) in 705 retail stores across the US (rollout to its fleet of approximately 1,350 stores will complete in 2008). The Inventory Management System is part of a multi-year store technology refresh project. Thus far, the changes have resulted in increased productivity at the front end, improved customer experience, and improved ability to respond to future business initiatives.

Please describe your company. (Number of employees, private/public, industry, etc.)

Big Lots is a Fortune 500 closeout retailer with over $4.5 billion in annual sales. With seven distribution centers and approximately 1,350 stores averaging nearly 30,000 sq. ft. each. The company is one of the largest specialty retailers in the country. Big Lots has been a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange for over 20 years.

Please describe the business and/or technical challenges you faced in this project.

Big Lots is two years into a three-year project to upgrade the hardware and software infrastructure at each of its approximately 1,350 stores across the United States. The second phase, completed in 2007, consisted of development and deployment of a suite of inventory management applications used daily at each store. Our legacy electronic cash register system was very limiting from a functionality perspective. In addition, our inventory applications ran on a variety of servers, used differing technologies, and had inconsistent user interfaces, making employee training difficult. We needed a modern solution that would improve system functionality and organizational productivity, as well as enhance the customer experience.

Due to the large number of stores, our implementation also needed to be cost effective. Store bandwidth also presented a challenge, since a vast majority of our stores have very limited bandwidth to the central office. Any new solution needed to provide a great deal of store autonomy and consider the limited bandwidth constraints. Finally, we needed our inventory applications to be usable on a variety of platforms with widely varying input capabilities, everything from a traditional server PC to a touch-screen Point-of-Sale system to a small-screen, pen-based mobile scanning device.

What was the desired solution?

We needed a custom application framework solution that would allow for quick development ‘sprints,’ enabling our development team to quickly add or change functionality to the store applications as necessary to further our business needs. The application framework solution also needed to be accessible from the variety of devices in the store. The solution needed to encompass the needs of both the corporate office and the retail stores.

Please describe your vendor selection process and why you chose JBoss in the end.

We recently switched our enterprise application server of choice to JBoss for development of JEE applications. We wanted to have a consistent direction for both corporate and store applications. We evaluated a variety of different platforms and settled on JBoss Enterprise Platform as the application server. Total cost of ownership and functionality were two of the key components of our decision.

The synergy between what we were looking for and the capabilities that Seam provided out of the box were a good fit, especially with its integration with RichFaces and AJAX4JSF (Java Server Faces).

Describe the application you built using JBoss. What role did JBoss and/or JBoss products play in the final solution?

We run a cluster of four JBoss Enterprise Application Platform servers in the central office, and each store has a back-office server running a single instance of JBoss Enterprise Application Platform server. The servers host a variety of business applications including inventory management, centralized returns, operations dashboard etc. Integration between the server at the store and the cluster in the central office is accomplished through both REST calls as well as a custom data synchronization framework.

We use JBoss Seam-based applications to integrate inventory management functions such as Inventory Transfers, Inventory Counts, Return to Vendor, Item Inquiry, Vendor Receiving, Store Supply Ordering, Inventory Adjustments etc. An example of one of the integrated functions that JBoss Seam enables is Item Inquiry. The store cashiers can open up the Item Inquiry application on their Point of Sale system and query an item using the SKU, UPC or Item Description or on their handheld device or the back-office server. JBoss Seam enables the Item Inquiry application to integrate with the Central Office and provide an accurate count of the number of items in the store or a sister store, as well as across the district and region.

Similarly, when we conduct inventory counts, JBoss Seam is designed to enable the Inventory Counts application to be accessed on handheld devices. A store associate may scan the bar code and the system automatically computes the total number of counts per SKU based on pending transfers, incoming shipments, inventory shrinkage, sales etc. This information is then sent to the central office to report the sales per store and the items that have been moving.

JBoss Seam was used to deliver our Inventory Management applications on multiple devices and browsers, including the servers in our back office, Point-of-Sale (POS) systems, and hand-held devices with integrated bar code scanners on the retail floor. Whether our employees work with a touch screen (on the Point of Sale) or the back-office server or the handheld device, we had to make our applications deliver the same functionality regardless of the interface.

What value did you gain from implementing JBoss solutions and how did this impact your business? (e.g. improved ROI, increased competitive advantage, better time to market, etc.)

• When the rollout of our new POS is complete, the employees will have a highly usable suite of inventory applications that replace a variety of applications built on a myriad of technologies. This has resulted in a reduction in training time and improved productivity.
• Each store has better control over its inventory and processes, and we now have the ability to deploy robust, new inventory-related features.
• Because of the faster throughput and reliability of the platform, stores are also able to operate with fewer registers and servers.
• We were able to consolidate the technology footprint in both the central office and the stores by reducing the amount of hardware and software platforms in use.
• Because of the availability of real time inventory information, customers have a friendlier store experience.
• IT is able to spend less time maintaining application infrastructure and more time developing business logic for the applications. We have improved the construction and design process and allowed new functionality to be developed in less time than with our legacy applications.
• By using open source software the company was able to reduce the cost of deployment in the stores and central office.

Please provide a technical description of implementation, including the size of deployment. (I.e. Hardware specs, applications, O/S, databases, etc.)

So far, we have deployed the new JBoss-based system to 705 of our 1,350 stores, and we expect the deployment to be complete by the middle of next year. Each store has an IBM store-hardened server with an Intel 3 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM running 64-bit Windows 2003 Server. We also have IBM electronic cash registers that host an Oracle POS system from which we launch a browser for accessing the JBoss Seam-based inventory applications.

Our hand-held devices are Symbol MC3000 Mobile Computers with 64 MB of memory. They communicate with the server over a wireless network. The handheld device allows employees to access most of the inventory application functionality using a built-in bar code scanner and the numeric keypad.

At the central office, we have a cluster of four JBoss Enterprise Application Platform servers running on two physical machines. These are typical Intel-based 64-bit Windows 2003 servers.

Did you leverage JBoss support services, training, or consulting? If so, please describe your experience?

We have had no specific JBoss training because we haven’t felt the need for it. We did use a JBoss consultant as part of our initial contract to help us set up the initial clusters.

We have used both the official support we receive through our JBoss Premium Support subscription, as well as the less formal, but invaluable, support from the open source community.

Do you have advice for other companies facing a similar business challenge?

Invest in a team of quality people; spend time researching new technologies to be assured of using the right tools for the job. Develop a simple open source policy that covers both consumption and contribution. And then contribute by testing, patching, and even developing new software. When developing custom UI components, work with the toolkit providers so that you don’t duplicate efforts.