PawnShop is an online e-commerce system that offers cash loans in exchange for valuable pieces of jewellery, i.e., pawns. Users of this system are also able to sell valuable items or buy items sold by other users.
Short description of the process:
A client has to log in in order to be able to sell or deposit goods consisting of valuable pieces of jewellery.
The first step is selecting a category for the item and input information that would make up the item's description. Depending on the information, the system outputs the amount of money that the item is worth. The amount of value that the client gets depends on the decision to sell or deposit the item, but also on the period of time the item is going to be stored.
An employee has to accept or deny the requests coming from the clients.
If a request is accepted, the client has to choose a delivery option: either bring the item to the shop or use the company pick-up service.
If the pick-up option is chosen, then the employee has to make sure that an appointment is set and that the customer delivery information is available.
As soon as the item is reaching the shop, an employee has to evaluate the state of the item (check authenticity, weight, etc) and pay the money to the client.
If items are stored, employees announce the client when the period of time for the storage is expiring. If no buy-back payment is done or if no extension of the period is chosen, then the item can further be sold by the company.
Who is the customer of your process?
The customers are persons who want to sell or deposit valuable goods when they are in need of money.
What is the result (service or product) of your process?
Automating the evaluation of items: making an offer, describing an item and delivering the item to the shop and getting the pawned item back.
What are the most important activities in the process?
- logging into the system
- offering a good and getting an automated evaluation
- accepting a good
- picking delivery option and delivery
- evaluate good manually by an employee
- paying customer
- notifying the customer regarding the pawn period expiration
- extending period of a pawned item or buying-back the item
Which technology shall be applied to innovate the process?
Digitalization of the process using servers, databases, APIs.
Exceptions Handling
1. Good does not correspond to the automated evaluation -> rejection of good by the employee
2. If the pick-up employee cannot pick-up the item at the scheduled time -> try reaching the client by phone
Customer identification
The customers will be identified by e-mail address. Internally, they will have a unique ID associated. Also, each offer will have a unique ID.
