Growth for businesses in the retail sector can often turn those businesses into victims of their own success. A larger staff spread across ever-increasing territories makes it difficult to manage operations. Acquisition of other companies brings culture clash and additional complexity to the organization. Pain points are experienced in the areas of information access, workforce scheduling, recruiting and selection, training and development, workload and task management, collaboration and communication, stock management, and strategic key performance indicators.

IBM On Demand Workplace is a comprehensive suite of software, hardware, services, and expertise that creates an environment where people dynamically interact with integrated business processes, other employees, partners, suppliers, and customers. IBM On Demand Workplace™ simplifies employee access to content, applications, people, and processes. An On Demand Workplace solution can bring relief to these pain points by integrating business operations and bringing key information and applications to workers through a Web-based portal.

In this series, the IBM On Demand Solution Center team takes you through the development of an On Demand Workplace for a fictitious company called International Food and Beverages. Stay with the team as it introduces you to International Food and Beverages, identifies their business problems, and then designs and develops a workplace solution using IBM Patterns for e-business, IBM products and tools, and open standards-based technologies including Java™, XML, and wireless.

Link to project implementation.