TPOS Product Solution Architecture

TCS Confidential

TPOSSolution ArchitectureMay, 2010Version 1.0

Tata Consultancy Services TCS Confidential 2


Table of Contents

1 OVERVIEW..............................................................................................................................................................4

1.1 OBJECTIVES..........................................................................................................................................................41.2 SCOPE....................................................................................................................................................................51.3 OVERVIEW OF PRODUCT SOLUTION.....................................................................................................................5

1.3.1 POS at the TILL............................................................................................................................................51.3.2 Central Instance functionalities...................................................................................................................61.3.3 Back Office functionalities...........................................................................................................................6

1.4 TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS..............................................................................................................................71.4.1 Interface with CIM/CSD...............................................................................................................................71.4.2 Interface with ERP.......................................................................................................................................71.4.3 Near Real Time Sync of Information across the system...............................................................................81.4.4 Management Console...................................................................................................................................8

2 FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE........................................................................................................................9

2.1 FUNCTIONAL VIEW...............................................................................................................................................92.2 CORE FUNCTIONAL MODULES..............................................................................................................................9

2.2.1 Central Instance ..........................................................................................................................................92.2.2 Back Office ................................................................................................................................................102.2.3 TILL............................................................................................................................................................11

3 PRODUCT TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE....................................................................................................12

4 APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE.....................................................................................................................14

4.1 USER INTERFACE RENDERER..............................................................................................................................154.2 NAVIGATION CONTROLLER................................................................................................................................154.3 PROCESS EXECUTOR...........................................................................................................................................154.4 SERVICE LAYER..................................................................................................................................................15

5 SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS .........................................................................................................................16

5.1 APPLICATION ENVIRONMENT .............................................................................................................................16


1 Overview

1.1 Objectives

The aim of this document is to provide a technical definition of the solution to such a level as to allow all

affected parties to be able to confidently sign up to delivering the proposition.

At a business study level it will detail the proposed:

Functional Architecture

System Technical architecture

Application Architecture

Integration Architecture

Data Architecture

Hardware / Deployment Architecture

Testing methodology

Implementation strategy

1.2 Scope

Full use cases can be found in the SRS.

In scope:

Design related to all modules that have been captured in the SRS

The interface mechanism from TPOS to the external systems

Design is specific to TPOS as a product.

Out of scope:

Interface customization that is specific to each external system

Utilization of data once it leaves the TPOS boundary.

CIM / CSD design

SAP related design

1.3 Overview of Product Solution

The proposed solution is as follows:


1.3.1 POS at the TILL

The POS functionalities at the TILL, mainly comprise of transaction management activities. The POS is a

core transaction engine that will be able to handle the various kinds of transactions that are required in

the retail format.

The POS gets active and ready to use only on the completion of the store begin at the BO and a

consecutive day begin at the TILL.

A successful day begin at the POS Till ensures that the business date has been refreshed, and all

transactions henceforth recorded would be linked to the corresponding business date.

At the POS TILL management of personnel using the TILL, is handled through Shift maintenance. Hence

allows the system to track the various shifts and the employees linked to a particular shift and the invoices

and activities done by the same.

The various functionalities at the POS would be with respect to transaction completeness, or

functionalities that would help in the creation of invoices, such as Item lookup, Bill look-up, Inventory

Look-up. The realization of any applicable promotions is also handled as part of the invoicing. At the TILL,

POS also manages credit notes, cash refund, trade In's , redemption and sale of Gift voucher. The core

part of the POS Till comprises of the various invoices and the management of the same.

The Till also handles various modes of payment against an invoice. It allows multiple modes of payment

against a single invoice.

The TILL is closed for the business day, when a Day end activity is done at the Back office. This would

consolidate the days earning in currency to the sales recorded by the system.

1.3.2 Central Instance functionalities

As the name indicates the application at the central instance, manages activities that would be handled at

the head office, or corporate management level. The functionalities that are handled centrally at the CI

would be reciprocated at the BO's and the TILL.

Below are the few critical functionalities of the CI module:

Role maintenance and management, this includes the creation and management of roles. Also includes

the mapping of users to each role, hence limiting the access to functionalities. This whole module is

configurable.

The TPOS at the CI also allows the users to configure the header, footer of the invoices at a format

specific way, and store specific manner.

There are various pre determined reasons for creation of return invoices, and high security activities.

These reasons can be created and managed at the CI, which would in turn be available at the TILL during

the invoice creation.


There are various reasons a markdown could be done at the store, to track this markdown, and to ensure

that markdowns are given at the right scenarios, it becomes essential to provide a system where the

corporate can configure and manage the markdown reason, this module is available at the CI.

Promotions that need to be run at the stores would be initially configured at the CI, from where the

promotions get communicated to the BO for the realisation.

At the Till multi modes of tender are accepted for the payment. But the master of the tenders to be

accepted would be configured at SAP and flown down to the CI, which would then share it across all the

BO's.

Since CI is the central component in the whole picture, any announcements, or memos, or scheduling of

activities that need to be handled at the store, can be created at the CI and propagated to the various

BO's.

Gift voucher management is an other key activity at the CI.

The final and the most important functionality would be reporting that would comprise of the whole picture

across all stores in the organization.

1.3.3 Back Office functionalities

The back office functionalities constitutes of activities that are store specific.

The back office system would be a central instance at the store, through which the store manager can

have a view of all the activities that is happening at the TILL's. This would also show the current sales

across the TILL's and also indicate if any high security events is occurring across the TILL's

The most primitive functionality at the BO, is the Till configuration, only when a Till's IP address has been

added into the system and linked to the BO, can any TILL activity be recorded into the system. One can

also configure the peripherals that the TILL would work along with.

For a new business day to start in the system, a day begin activity is a must. This would ensure that all

the transactions of the previous day are stored into the system, and the store is open for a new business

day. Similarly the day end process, closes the store in the system. Once a day end activity is done at the

store, no more transactions can be recorded for the day.

Before a day end activity can be initiated, store declaration is mandatory. Declaration would compare the

actual currency collected against the sales in the system. This declaration can be handled as TILL level

declaration or employee wise declaration.

Any of the discrepancy that is identified during the declaration, needs to be handled and put into the

system through the declaration correction activity.

BO also provides a facility where application related configurations can be maintained, which will be

reflected across all the TILL's.

The life cycle management of the gift voucher is also handled at the BO. Here creation, sale and

redemption are handled.


BO also allows the system to create shelf edge labels, that would be used operationally at the store.

The store manager can also do the various lookups, which are, item, bill and the inventory lookup.

1.4 Technical Considerations

The following are the few critical technical considerations for the TPOS product.

1.4.1 Interface with CIM/CSD

TPOS has close communication with the Customer Information management system, and the customer

Service Desk.

The customer information is in sync with the data present in the CIM system. Hence when a customer

visits the store, the TILL will be able to fetch the customer details. POS also is capable of capturing new

customer information and sending the same to CIM.

Invoices that are created at the TILL are sent to the CSD system, near real time, which in turn takes care

of the demo/installations.

1.4.2 Interface with ERP

TPOS is closely linked to ERP. The core data that comprises of the articles available and the stock

against each is obtained from ERP as an outbound. ERP communicates these information to POS via,

idocs, which in turn are processed by TPOS and translated into the database. Near real time transactions

are communicated to ERP from TPOS as inbound activity.

1.4.3 Near Real Time Sync of Information across the system

TPOS communicates to 2 external entities, which is SAP and CIM/CSD systems.

From SAP information is kept at sync by periodic processing of the outbound Idocs. The transactions at

the TILL are sent back to the SAP near real time as and when the transaction is complete through the

inbound mechanism.

Similarly TPOS and CIM/CSD maintain information sync near real time.

1.4.4 Management Console

Branch wise management console to enable the branch administrator or store manager to manage and

track the activities across the TILL’s this console would be able to showcase the overall sales that has

occurred at each TILL, along with the tracking of any high security events.


TPOS Product TPOS_Product_Solution_Architecture

2 Functional Architecture

The below sections provide the high level functional overview of the TPOS and brief on few of the critical

functional modules.

2.1 Functional View

2.2 Core Functional Modules

2.2.1 Central Instance

Module Name Module description

Organization structure this will show the mapping of the organization across the stores and regions. This

will replicate the data that is configured in SAP.

Roles definition this module will manage the role maintenance. It will allow the user to create and

update the various roles.

Access configuration: This module will manage the mapping of the roles to the functionality that is

accessible

Tender management this module will show the various tenders that are in use within the POS

Tata Consultancy Services IRL- TCS Confidential 9


Configurable Alerts this module will allow the end user to create alerts that would be shown for high

security actions.

Promotion

Configuration

this module would be specific to the creation and management of promotions.

System Configuration All system level configurations will be handled by this module.

Reporting TPOS will have the standard reports that are linked with a Point of Sale

GV management This module will handle the complete GV Management

2.2.2 Back Office

Module Name Module Description

Price change this module handles all the price change activities, temporary and permanent

changes

Cash management this module is mapped to manage the float management and the declaration.

Electronic journal this is a journal that tracks all the high security activities that occur in the POS.

Store manager

dashboard

This module would give a overall view of the sales and the activities in one screen

of all the TILL's in the store

Shelf edge Ticket

printing

this module is specific to the shelf label printitng



Employee

Management

This module would manage the employees in the store, their time sheet entry etc.

GV Management This module will handle the complete GV management module

2.2.3 TILL

Module Name Module Description

Shift Handling this module is the core of the TILL. It manages and tracks the shifts in the TILL

Sales the various kinds of sales transactions are handled in this module

Cash pick-up Cash pickup is of two types, Declaration, Till full

Across-store Returns this module would handle the return transactions, credit notes and cash refunds

Item/Bill void this module handles the parking and voiding of the invoices and the items

Promotion application this module manages the various promotions that are applicable on an invoice

along with the realization of the same.

Item look-up this module handles the item/product lookup, this module would fetch all the

details against the particular item.

Bill hold This module handles the parking of transaction. A parked transaction can be

reopened at a later point to complete the process.

Multi-mode payment This module handles the payment options. TPOS allows multi-mode payment for

a single invoice



Inventory look-up This module provides the present stock in the store, DC .

Customer Look-up This module would pull out the information of any customer who is stored in the

CI repository.

Gift voucher This module handles the gift voucher management, which includes the creation,

sale and the redemption of the same across stores.

Training mode This module handles the running of the TPOS in training mode. In this mode the

cashier can explore the TPOS.

3 Product Technical Architecture

TPOS can be configured to work in 3 different layers. Depending on the instance where it is deployed,

related features would be made available

At the topmost layer is the ERP system, which would hold the article, merchandise, tax, payment, human

resource repository.

Information from SAP to Central instance, happens via an interface layer, that would parse the idocs that

are generated from the SAP XI, into the global data format object, which in turn would be feed into the

database at the Central instance.

At the CI, user can access the POS application to handle central reporting, role maintenance, promotion

configuration...

The data from the Central instance flows to the back office systems. This is made feasible through

triggers that are defined at the database level, through a mechanism called “Change data Capture”. At

the BO store related activities are carried out. In a thin client architecture, the TILL accesses the database

that resides at the back office layer.

Transactions that occur at the TILL are captured in the Back office database. This information gets

propagated to the Central instance, through the change data capture mechanism. On regular intervals the

transactions that occur across the BO's and that which gets updated at the CI , are created into an idoc,

which in turn would be propagated to the ERP system.



PS: Syncing of data across the layers within the TPOS is near real time, this is managed through Change

Data Capture.



4 Application Architecture

TPOS is designed on layered approach that isolates the various core technical responsibilities clearly.

The below diagram gives a diagrammatic view of the various application layers in the



4.1 User Interface Renderer

This layer is configurable based on the format in which the POS is configured to run. It could be SWING,

JSP, JSF or any future rendering components that would be plugged-in.

At high level, this layer manages the following:

Page Layout – look and feel, view components location

Page Validation – page view components level validation like text box validation etc

4.2 Navigation Controller

This layer manages the end to end page navigation for the application. It manage the flow control of the

application execution. Depending on the current state of execution, the data binding would be carried out

at this layer so that appropriate page gets rendered.

4.3 Process Executor

This layer manages the sequencing of process steps that need to be executed for the requested business

transaction. The POS engine at run time determines the next best action for the business scenario and

executes the process step.

4.4 Service Layer

This is the core business logic layer that manages the independent business functionality exposed as

services. The layer invokes the data abstraction layer that does appropriate binding to the database

entities.



5 Software Environments 5.1 Application environment

OS Suse Linux 11 / Windows

DB Mysql 5.1.4

DB driver Mysql

JVM JDK 1.4 or JDK 1.6

Change Data Capture Symmetric ds


Documents

TPOS Product Solution Architecture