Challenge
Evolving in a sector in growing demand, coupled with a health crisis, Gestocigars SA teams had to face an increase in the number of online sales of more than 205% between 2019 and 2020.
In order to absorb this new workload it was important to modernize the different systems and the way they interact.
Gestocigars SA
Founded by Mr. Rios in 1996, Gestocigars is an importer of Cuban cigars but above all an obligatory point of passage for aficionados in French-speaking Switzerland who meet in the imposing humidor among thousands of cigar boxes.
If it isn't broken, then update it
The existing systems had not been updated for several years for a reason too often mentioned : they work, but at what cost ? The POS system had not been updated for 8 years.
Security was no longer guaranteed, so it had been moved to an off-network virtualization environment based primarily on operating systems that were no longer supported.
Updating the various systems was the obvious first step in this project and allowed the teams to access all the systems from a common network, thus saving time in managing an order.
Eliminate double entry
Very quickly we identified a double entry in the order management process. Once the order was placed online, it was manually entered into the POS system in order to clear the ordered items from the inventory.
On the other hand, inventory management was decentralized and price updates were done both in the POS system and in Prestashop.
Using the APIs of Prestashop and the POS system, we created a PHP microservice that allows to automatically check out orders and synchronize prices to avoid these daily double entries.
Follow up
The project relies on the use of recent technologies to allow the different systems to communicate with each other, and we are now in charge of the follow-up, support and updates.
A strategic watch has also been set up to identify new digital solutions aimed at optimizing the order management process and guaranteeing the security of the system.