Case Study on an Android App for Inventory Management System with Sales Prediction for Local Shopkeepers in India

The retail sector has widely adapted different inventory management applications and some retail chains even employ prediction software to analyze future sales. However, a lot of day-to-day shopping in India happens through local shops. The owners of such mom-and-pop shops do not necessarily have the capital to invest in proprietary applications for setting up an inventory management system. Needless to say that same is the case for any sales prediction software. As a result, many of the shopkeepers end up hoarding a lot of irrelevant and nonprofitable products that lead to financial losses. A very cost-effective and accessible solution for this problem is a mobile application that provides all the features of a point-of-sale system as well as gives future sales insights. It will enable shopkeepers to manage their current product purchases and invoicing. The predictive sales analysis will help them to modify their investments on products and supplies thereby ensuring maximum profits. If a shop houses relevant products that cater to customer needs, its customer reach will increase. The Economic Times published an article in the May of 2019, which stated that the number of smartphone users in India is expected to rise by 84% to 859 million by 2022 from 468 million in 2017. It is safe to assume that a large population of shop owners will have smartphones in the following years. Hence, equipping the local shopkeepers with a mobile application will prove instrumental since it will give them exposure to all the aforementioned benefits.