Problem Statement
In 2019, what started as a regular case of flu in China quickly changed into one of the biggest problems that our generation will ever encounter. Yes, we are talking about the novel coronavirus (Covid-19). The disease has affected millions and many had to suffer from it in one way or another. It has claimed countless lives but that's not the only damage it did. People who weren't affected were devasted due to the fact that almost all of the world was on complete lockdown which led to the closure of businesses, loss of jobs, and bringing an ultimate nightmare to the world. If we focus on the closure of businesses, we can quickly see a pattern, most of the businesses that closed are community-based. Small-time businesses, serving and keeping the traditions of the community. These businesses were the source of income for many but their closure has caused extreme financial problems for a large number of people. The pandemic has erupted our current economical system and it has proven that our current system is not equipped to help our local businesses. The proof is right in front of our eyes, it has been nearly 2 years since covid-19 came to be a thing and you would think that the world would come to adapt to the new circumstances it's been thrown into. This is true to some extent but when you look at the loss of business to the loss of life, it's just as severe and deadly. Just in America, a sharp decline in the unemployment rate has been seen and many businesses have been shut down. All of this is the result of the lacking efforts shown by governments to businessmen and little to no aid being provided.
Solution Introduction
This is a serious problem and we believe that we have found a solution that can help these businesses stay afloat. We propose a platform, an application, and a website, that businesses can use to connect with each other and form alliances. Companies can sign up on our platform giving us the necessary details such as
- What kind of business they are
- What are their strengths
- What are their weaknesses
- Things they need help with
and these details will be available publicly and to our AI. The AI will consider these details and try to pair companies with each other that are believed to be the best fit and would complement each other. Hence, Our platform will provide two ways to match up the businesses. The first being that companies can look at the profiles of the other companies and pair them manually and other options will be through our AI.
These features will allow companies to form a network and utilize it whenever it's needed but that's not all because for a business to survive it cannot be financially wasteful especially under current circumstances. Hence, we will also utilize our AI to gather information from businesses and give predictions for optimization.
Our AI will collect data from the businesses on our platform and then predict the future sales, the number of personnel required for a task, the required stocks, and other ways to cut the cost. We will also be able to utilize the data collected to form an interactive dashboard so that business owners could also see the trend.
Impact of the Solution
The solution we present will help startups and small business owners to form a network of their own. This network will allow them to solve existing problems, discover new ideas and most importantly this network will provide hope and support to a business owner who is already suffering because of the current situation.
Our network will allow businesses to tackle problems together but it does not stop there. We also collect information about the weakness of the business and the reason we do that is because we want to encourage businesses to provide their services to each other. A great example of this is that if you imagine a restaurant that has to get its fries stock from a large company that restaurant has a small possibility of negotiation but if the same restaurant is offered the stock of fries from a local company that is showing flexibility in the price, and if the restaurant accepts the local supplier's offer, both businesses benefit from it. Support can range from product sales to advertisement. The platform would be perfect for advertising companies to form alliances with underrated companies that lack exposure.
The second part of the solution will also help these businesses to cut the unnecessary costs that they are currently paying. The predictions that AI will provide will allow owners to get an idea of sales in the upcoming month and what products would be sold the most so the owners could buy the stocks accordingly. This is an extremely powerful feature that will minimize cost and wastage. The AI will also provide information about the number of people a job requires which will directly help with the current pandemic situation where social distancing is one the most important things.
Technicalities of the Solution
For the backend of the solution, we will be implementing a graphql API using Node JS, Express JS, and Apollo. This API will be used to communicate between the frontend and the databases. Essentially, this API will collect data from the frontend, validate it and save it to the first database. We will also implement another API that will be written in python. In this API we will implement our AI. The second API will also be connected to the databases so it has the access to the collected data. Once, the AI consumes the data and starts giving predictions it will save the predictions in the second database so the first API could access it.
Coming towards the front end we will be using React JS to implement the site and React Native for the app. Using these frontend technologies will allow us to reuse the code and it will also allow us to easily maintain it.
Please have a look at the diagram to have a better understanding
Future Possibilities
Initial success to the idea will pave the way for future expansions in such a way that shall allow the already active ecosystem to expand in such a way that it will begin to involve big corporations where a single corporation can help and support 100's of small businesses and vice versa resulting in providing further exposures to small businesses, such that wouldn't be possible in any other way.
Furthermore, we will provide features that can turn out to be really beneficial for small businesses. One feature would be to hire the services of our expert staff in assistance of paperwork and other legalities. The app will also provide an outreach program for customers who are unable to pay upfront. Programs like these will enable and push companies into helping each other resulting in a better and stronger ecosystem.
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