Online Food Ordering System - Research Proposal Example

Online Food Ordering System [Name of Student] [Name of Affiliate Institution] Table of Contents Abstract 3 Introduction 4 Rationale and context 4 Aims 5 Research questions 6 Proposed research methods 6 Ethical and Access Issues 7 Potential value of the Research 7 Initial Literature Review 7 Current online food ordering services 10 Requirements 11 Hardware Requirements 12 System development methodology 13 References 15 Abstract Online Food ordering system is an application dedicated to being used in the food delivery industry. The system is designed to make it easy for the hotels and restaurants to increase the quality of their business through the implementation of technology. The system is further designed to serve the increasing number of clients who prefer to order food and let it be delivered. The essence of the system is that it will lead to reduced costs of production for the hoteliers, make it easy to order the meal for the clients, eliminate inconveniences and ensure easy management of the inventory. The system is ideal in the today’s fast-paced world, especially in the cities, where people are busy and thus the food delivery industry is critical in saving time and creating more time for the business hours (Beltis, 2016). The implementation of the system, thus, serves an existing market gap and will be instrumental in revolutionizing the way hoteliers operate. Introduction The world today is a very competitive place to live. People are busy building careers, working on parenting and studies among other places, and most times find the hustle of queuing up to pay for meals daunting (Scifo & Scifo et al., 2008). There is a glaring gap, therefore, in the food delivery industry as it facilitates the elimination of all these inconveniences and makes the food ordering process fast and efficient. The proposed system takes the form of a mobile application, to be hosted on the Android framework in the meantime. The application, to be named E-food, makes the process of referring food efficient and easy, for both the restaurant and the customer. The system comes in the form of an interactive menu that guides the customer to select a meal from a given food menu. The system is highly scalable and extensible, can facilitate either the preorder strategy where the food is ordered before the customer comes into the restaurant, or can be used to initiate the food delivery process. Rationale and context There are many reasons that justify the implementation of the system. The first and the most important is that it makes the process of food ordering to be as fast and efficient as possible. There is also a wide demand for food ordering services in today’s restaurants. Once the system has been well implemented, it can drive in more revenue for the company due to the resulting convenience. E-food ordering system will seek to fill the market gaps and voids that have resulted in the implementation of other similar systems. There have been several efforts in the past by different businesses to build an online presence and implement food ordering systems of different scales. This has been done with various degrees of success and failure (Beltis, 2016). The development will first analyze the market needs and how to customize the application to address the specific existing needs of the market. Developing an application that addresses the specific challenges of shopping is critical. Aims The aims of the research and development process is to ensure the development of a simple product and which addresses the specific needs of the food ordering market. The research phase, thus, will seek to understand and evaluate the current industry standards on the specific food ordering systems available. The development will further seek to make use of the very best technologies and development strategies available today in order to ensure that the end product satisfies the current demand and serves the specific purpose it was designed to serve. This informs the use of the Android platform as the most ideal to launch the application. The scalability of the system is also of core necessity and will be a critical consideration of the development process. The system further aims at adding the necessary competence to businesses. The hotels and restaurants should, for instance, make use of the system to grow sales and revenue effectively. The system should be able to help the businesses increase the number of clientele served among other competencies. The system should support easy tracking of the sales and revenues, client feedback, tracking of the other customer tastes and help the business to be more effective. Research questions 1. What are the current market/industry standards of online food ordering standards? 2. What are the customer traits and shopping habits that should guide the implementation of a modern online food ordering system? 3. What are the technical requirements that are critical to the implementation of a modern food ordering system? Proposed research methods The research methods to be used include an analysis of the current systems in the market and their competencies. The research will also review the different sources of secondary literature published on the topic in order to understand the current market needs of the markets and how best to satisfy the market. Ethical and Access Issues The ethical issues in the food industry mainly revolve around the health aspect and the guarantee that the quality will not be compromised. It has also been noted in the past that some people make reservations and orders that they are not willing to take, or generally clog the systems with fake orders. It is also possible that some people may place orders with the intention of reselling them to others (Silberman, 2014). These are only some of the ethical issues that will affect the research and development process and it is important that there are ways to contain them so that they do not result in excessive business losses. Potential value of the Research The research will enable the understanding and segmentation of the market needs and enable the development of a targeted system that will in turn enable the increase in market competence. The findings will inform future developments in the future and will also enable the improvement of the system in order to address the challenges that will come up in the future given that the market is highly dynamic. Initial Literature Review The main functionality of the process is based on the food ordering process. It allows one to choose from given restaurants or food joints in the locality given. It facilitates order taking, tracking of the orders and updates on the preparation and allows the buyer to conveniently choose from a wide range of cuisine (Morganosky & Cude, 2002). The system is further highly scalable as it can be extended to facilitate the delivery of the meals, can be securely integrated with modern online payment systems and can be further extended to manage other aspects of the business such as the financial tracking and the inventory management. The key advantages of the tool is that it is developed to be highly convenient (can be accessed by the user anywhere, on the phone), has an interacting user interface and thus good user experience and is highly scalable. The choice of making it Android means it is easy to render updates. There is a glaring need for such a system in the today world. There have been several attempts to solve the challenge of food ordering, with different levels of success and failure. There is a clear need for such a system as the past tools developed in the same domain have not been very efficient (Alagoz & Hekimoglu, 2012). The Electronic Food Ordering System to be developed will seek to fill in the voids and address the core areas that the other systems failed to do so. Technology has arguably affected nearly every industry on the planet today and the food industry remains a no exception. There has been increasing need to grow the capacity of the food industry, facilitate food deliveries, delve into the changing consumer habits and build businesses that will effectively and sustainably survive the future. There have been pressing challenges in the consumer habits, and the rising number of people who prefer to either reserve a meal or have it delivered to their places of work, school or home is on the rise. The inclusion of the ability for customers to order meals adds the idea that the business is modern and adds multiple accesses to the business and effectively adds multiple revenue streams. According to Statista, one of the chief influences for shopping are the day to day devices that people use. There has been an increased usage of smartphones and tablets to place orders to restaurants on the go. According to their findings, 18% of those surveyed aged between 18 and 54 years indicated that they had used their handheld devices to place orders to restaurants at least once per month (Statista, 2016). This hints of the available market that is both growing and dynamic that the hoteling businesses can tap into to grow their businesses. There have been various past successful attempts to inculcate ordering systems to businesses and which have paid off, in different scales. Wingstop Restaurants, Inc. headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is one of the most critical case studies of the benefits that can be harnessed from the good implementation of such a system. The System implemented by Wingstop is online and directly connected to the Point of Sale and the kitchen. The company notes that since the implementation of the system, there has been an increase in the accuracy of the ordering process and an improvement in the overall customer experience. The company has been able to collect customer data and develop more meaningful and targeted marketing campaigns and products based on the customer tastes (Jennings, 2016). The company further notes that there exists a big opportunity for businesses to grow online, especially those that target orders for takeout. The company notes that when customers order online, they tend to spend about $4 more than the average cost. This points out to the fact that the system will help the business to harness more value by spending less and optimizing profits. There has been sustained investment in the food ordering market by different venture capitalists since 2013, an indicator of the deep potential that the industry holds. In 2012 and 2013, 25 million dollars and 46 million dollars were invested in the food ordering market respectively. In 2014 alone, the amount invested in the industry was $600 million. In 2015, an average of $ 360 million was invested in the industry. By 2015, the amount that had been invested in the industry totaled to approximately $1.2 billion dollars. The rising investment shows the confidence in the market’s potential (Kim, 2015). There is a clear under-penetration in the market which in turn presents an interesting opportunity and manageable risk. According to Techcrunch, the food takeout market is worth approximately $ 70 billion. Of this, only $9 billion transactions currently happen online, indicating that the remaining $61 dollar market remains largely untapped. In a world where a lot of things are done using a computer or such related device, there exists an opportunity for the businesses today to grow their competence. In their paper titled, “The Current State of Online Food Ordering in the U.S. Restaurant Industry”, Sheryl Kimes, 2011, presents the findings from a study involving 372 restaurant operators that deal with takeout orders. The restaurateurs involved in the study indicated that they had been impressed by the role of technology in their businesses which resulted in a higher ROI, convenience and better business control. The study discovered that at least 26% of the hoteliers analyzed had some form of online food ordering framework in place majorly in the fast-casual, quick service, pizza and sandwich and other segments such as Mexican restaurants (Kimes, 2011). In all this, the use of the mobile phone as an ordering tool was most common. Current online food ordering services The online food ordering services have been growing in the country for some time now. As part of the strategy to understand the market, it is imperative to analyze the current products in the market which also serve as the industry standard presently in order to borrow some of the best practices to aid the crafting of a novel product. Campusfood.com is a company that works with various campuses across the United States and allows one to order from their favorite campus eateries and have it delivered. The process works online through the main website or via SMS. GrubHub.com operates in Chicago, San Francisco and Boston area and connects one to eating points within their specific localities. GrubHub connects diners and the members of the corporate world with thousands of hotels and eating places that it has created partnerships with. Eat24.com is more specific to E-food as it is both accessible from the mobile aspect as well as on the web. It has support of mobile application where users can easily connect with restaurants and order food. Another company that operates in a near-similar way to the model proposed by E-food is Just-Eat.com. The company has mobile applications for Android, Windows and iOS and serves clients in India, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Requirements The development will make use of modern software development tools mainly Netbeans, IntelliJIDEA, and Android Studio among others. The languages used will mainly be Java, C and C++. The different languages have different capabilities and will be used in the different and specific areas in order to realize a highly efficient system. The main coding environment for the mobile application will be the Android Studio. a) Java Programming Language: This will be used for interface design, validation, handling of events such as mouse clicks and general front-end functionalities. It will be the primary design language that will be used to generate a majority of the aspects of the program. Java is a versatile language that is cross-platform and hence one of the most ideal to be used for the coding of the application. The language is also used in the development of the primary Android Studio and is one of the industry requirements for coding. b) MySQL Server: MySQL Server will be for back-end functionalities. It will be used to handle all database related functionalities including data definition and data manipulation in relational databases. Databases are critical for the said application as they store the different information about the system such as the user needs, the names of and types of meals and cuisines. It further helps in storage and tracking of the inventory in order to ensure that the specific goals of the system are met. c) Netbeans IDE: This will be the programming environment. It will form the programming IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It will be the environment within which the Java language will be used to code, The IDE supports running of Java programs and provides a debugging tool for the programs written in Java. d) WAMP/XAMPP Sever/MySQL Workbench: Any of this will help in providing a Graphical User Interface interaction with the database if need be. The main environment to test the application will be the android studio. Hardware Requirements i. Intel Microprocessor; at least Pentium IV. ii. RAM; at least 1GB iii. Hard Disk; at least 500 GB System development methodology Extreme programming, XP, is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent "releases" in short development cycles. This is intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints where new customer requirements can be adopted. The main goal of XP is to lower the cost of change in software requirements. Extreme Programming Phases Time schedule ACTIVITY DURATION (WEEKS) Project Concept Paper 1 Project Proposal 2 Review of Related Material 1 Functional specification 2 Software design 2 Coding 4 Software testing 2 Implementation 3 Documentation To be done throughout the process Project Gantt chart ACTIVITY DURATION IN WEEKS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Project description Project proposal Review Related Material Functional specification Software design Coding Software testing Implementation Documentation References Alagoz, S.M. and Hekimoglu, H., 2012. A study on tam: analysis of customer attitudes in online food ordering system. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 62, pp.1138-1143. Beltis, A. (2016). 9 Reasons to Implement a Restaurant Online Food Ordering System. [online] Pos.toasttab.com. Available at: https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/online-food-ordering-system [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]. Jennings, L. (2016). Tech spotlight: Wingstop upgrades online ordering. [online] Nrn.com. Available at: http://nrn.com/technology/tech-spotlight-wingstop-upgrades-online-ordering [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]. Kim, E. (2015). A Secular Shift To Online Food Ordering. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/07/a-secular-shift-to-online-food-ordering/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]. Kimes, S.E., 2011. The current state of online food ordering in the US restaurant industry. Morganosky, M.A. and Cude, B.J., 2002. Consumer demand for online food retailing: is it really a supply side issue?. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 30(10), pp.451-458. Scifo, D., Scifo, M., Scifo, D., Valente, L. and Valente, R., 2008. Online food ordering system and method. U.S. Patent Application 12/069,895. Silberman, G. (2014). What are some ethical concerns regarding the online-restaurant reservation selling startups?. [online] Quora.com. Available at: https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-ethical-concerns-regarding-the-online-restaurant-reservation-selling-startups [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]. Statista. (2016). Restaurants: takeout via mobile devices U.S. 2014 | Statistic. [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/302221/use-of-smartphones-to-order-takeout-or-delivery-us/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]. Read More