https://orbital-digital-it.herokuapp.com
DigitalIT
Apollo 11
Digitalizing one's business is often regarded as the most fundamental thing we should do in today's world. From setting up a seller account in Instagram, Facebook, Shoppee, hiring influencers to review and promote our products and services, using online finance and banking tools in keeping track of our business performance - the list is never ending!
Yet the abundant digital resources that are scattering in the App Store seem to have left those with the least knowledge and experience in the online market with confusion. Particularly in Indonesia, where you could find almost every app for any needs. There are so many choices, and ultimately, we are left with decision questions: Where should I set up my seller profile? Tokopedia? Shoppee? Instagram? Facebook? or maybe, Tinder?! Should I just choose everything? But how do I manage all those accounts??
We are determined to help answers those questions. Just as the PwC, McKinsey and BCG to giant corporations in the world, we aim to be a personal consultant to these small business owners. We are trying to integrate the consulting services into our end product, perhaps testing on how machine learning could help in decision making process. Once we are able to do so, this web application could potentially automate the business consulting practice.
DigitalIT will be a web application focusing on making decisions and generating recommendations on growth strategy based on the user's business profile and condition. We are starting from basic feature such as determining suitable e-commerce platform based on the business business_category (fashion, electronics or culinary). But ultimately, we are aiming for DigitalIT to be able to generate much more advanced recommendations - similar to those generated by professional business consultants.
We have identified two layers of motivation in our users, translating to two long-term focus areas in our value proposition.
Motivation
Focus areas
DigitalIT is a web application that acts as personal business consultant for business owners. Users can enter their business particulars and there will be generated recommendation that they can choose to implement. As their business gradually grow, users can update their business data and DigitalIT will continue to generate strategies that they could follow.
DigitalIT features are outlined in the following sections, organized by the following tags:
Proposed - users can access their account by several procedures:
Current Progress Milestone 1: We have finished the design of Sign up, Log in and Forgot password pages using Figma. Currently we have the working form of Signup and Log in with basic styling. Milestone 2: We have finished creating and deploying the feature for Sign up, Login and authentication of users.
Additional Features - users can read and agree on these pages before signing up:
Proposed - a form that enables users to key in business information such as:
This is the very first task that the users need to complete in order to be able to use our service. This data will then be stored in DigitalIT database and will be used to generate insights and recommended strategies.
Current Progress Milestone 1: A form that enables users to key in business information such as:
Milestone 2: A form that enables users to key in business information such as:
The information is able to be stored automatically on the DigitalIT database. The database design and backend for viewing, editing and deleting these information have also been built.
Additional Feature - improve the user experience and accuracy of the data by adding functionality to accomodate for:
Proposed - based on the provided information, we can generate recommendations for:
The recommendations will be updated indefinitely to suit the business condition that changes from time to time, which in turn will be reflected once the users update their data. The recommendations will also require users to update their progress, such as telling DigitalIT which platforms they decide to use and the sales generated from each platform. Ultimately, the concept will follow a mission-based game system, in which users are required to continue on hitting each milestone before moving on to the next part.
Current Progress Milestone 1: We are providing basic recommendations on e-commerce platforms based on the business type using dropdowns menu and simple if-else algorithm. Milestone 2: We disabled the previous feature progress to be able to work on the improvised version with machine learning.
Additional Feature - we are hoping to integrate machine learning into our algorithm to allow for more precise recommendations to enhance business in aspects such as digital marketing and pricing strategies. For example, DigitalIT will be able to retrieve information on prices of similar products offered by our users and recommend on suitable pricing tiers to optimize profit.
Proposed - based on the provided financial data, we can automatically generate insights such as:
The generated result will be in a easy-to-understand charts and tables, as we want to cater for business owners who might not understand these definitions. In addition, we will also provide a simple interpretation such as, "Your business is doing great!" or "Your growth is declining."
Current Progress - we have yet to bring this feature into realization. However, we have obtained the knowledge to perform these financial calculations.
Additional Feature - we are hoping to increase functionality by bringing these features:
Proposed
Current Progress - we have completed the design for Need Help section on Figma, but have yet to build the working technical proof.
Additional Feature
Online database to store information and deploy our web application.
Collaborate, version control and organize our workflow.
Build the backend and control the server routing. request, etc.
Build design prototype and customized elements.
Build user interfaces for our web application.
Primary database.
We make use of GitHub Projects (classic) for organizing tasks into 3 business_category: To Do, In Progress and Done. We are still new to this GitHub feature, so hopefully we will be able to implement a more sophisticated project management in future work.
We make use of Git and GitHub for version control of our product. Currently we have 107 commits on the main branch, 16 pull requests (closed), 5 issues (closed) and 9 branches. We assign each other as reviewers, put labels, projects and milestones on each pull request and issues to make sure we are always updated on each other's work.
We have opted to host our database and web application on Heroku.
Smoke Testing - We perform smoke testing whenever a new feature or improvement is added to the main branch to ensure that the new feature is working. Testing is usually done directly through the web application after deployment. Before deployment, we use Postman to test the server and routing connection.
Regression Testing - We perform regression testing whenever a new feature or improvement is added to the main branch to ensure that all the previous features are still working. Testing is usually done by several steps:
Not available. We plan on setting up automated testing by using features available on Postman.
In this section, we would like to discuss various problems and constraints that we face during the development process. Some of these limitations result from our own choices, while some are inevitable.
Since we host our database using Heroku free-tier plan, there will be limitations on the type of testing that we can perform.
We opt for a “traditional” tech stack and try to code everything from scratch for a better learning experience. Therefore it usually takes us a while to build, integrate and deploy new features.
It may be due to the lack of our time management skill, but we do feel like we are lacking behind our plan. We have not yet implemented our most essential feature, and might not be able to bring the [ Additional Features ] into realization. However, we do plan to make more efforts for the next milestone.
While we are not really satisfied with our performance for this milestone, we still believe that we will be able to complete the proposed features by Milestone 3 / Splashdown. Aspects that we would like to improve in the next milestone are as follow:
We would like to improve our code efficiency and readability by enhancing its structure, usage and documentation.
Our web application is still using the Bootstrap pre-made design with modifications to suit our needs. We would like to make further modifications to introduce customized elements and increase our identity.
We would like to exploit more of the GitHub features to increase our collaboration effort. Some of them include CI/CD, Actions and Projects.
Bugs-free and achieve our goals.
Refer to this document for more detailed README.