Developing A Cloud-Based POS System

The Challenge

What happens when your 'hero' engineer leaves unexpectedly
Our client is a family-owned business that hosts some of the largest children's consignment sales in the Atlanta, Georgia area.  Over the past 20 years, they have worked hard to build a loyal and ever-growing following that now includes more than 2000 consigners per sale.

As the number of sellers has continued to steadily increase year over year, the IT systems supporting the company's sales began to strain.  In addition, at the beginning of 2016, the lone 'hero' engineer in charge of IT systems abruptly quit, leaving our client in a vulnerable position heading into their sales season.  With an outdated code base and no IT management, our client lost a significant amount of business over the course of their first two sales as their systems began to fail.

Our Solution

Stabilizing the system
When ThinkBridge stepped in prior to their upcoming sale, the first priority was to quickly stabilize the existing code and ensure our client could conduct their next event backed by a reliable point of sale (POS) system.

With that hurdle successfully crossed, we went to work on updating the underlying code base and moving the entire system into Microsoft Azure, which provided our client the stability and reliability they need to run their sales.  Daily backups are now automatically taken and stored in the cloud, a job previously done by manually creating a complete copy of the site and storing it on the CEO’s personal computer.  Employees can now access and manage the inventory databases remotely and the system code is routinely updated to the latest version releases.

Project Highlights

• System moved to Microsoft Azure
• Daily backups automatically generated
• Remote access to inventory databases
• System code is regularly updated to latest version

‍