Tailor | Database Website 

Tailor is a project proposal designed for a family-run business Malaysian tailor who does clothing alteration and seamstress services. The shop is located in Larkin (Johor), the southern part of Malaysia. On a geographical side, it’s on borders just next to Singapore. 

Tailor featured a database-driven website that enabled its customers, both from Larkin and Singapore to track their orders and receive notifications on ready-date collection online.

Problems

The business owner is comfortable with the old traditional way of storing a large number of customers’ data using a physical filing system. She keeps track of the paper-based database and files the data according to the first alphabet name of her customers.

Commonly for every sewing project completion, the business owner would landline call her customers to notify them of the ready pick-up dates. Such project management method is evident as a lack of work process efficiency, and wastage of time to manually call up individual customers. Hence, providing the collection details online will help to solve the issues of handling numerous phone calls on enquiring common questions such as opening hours especially on public holidays, or the collection date.

Project Goals

As the customers are based within 2 countries, a separate MySQL database between Singapore and Malaysia is created and segmented for easy retrieval of data.

The initialized identification to represent each country is also recommended. Malaysian customers need to input the alphabet ‘M’ at the start of the individual unique identification number allocated to them, whereas Singapore customers will input the alphabet ‘S’. This will ensure that there will be no clash of IDs even if both the Malaysian and Singaporean customers coincidentally hold the same national identification number. This also serves as the immediate recognition of an individual customer’s nationality.

Solutions

My main role as a project lead was to consult with the client, ensuring the project objectives are met. I’ve also handled the entire UI, visual graphics, and HTML coding. I worked with a student intern, Gladwyn, who focused mainly on MySQL and PHP.

Due to the large volume of customers, a separate customer database of different nationalities, between Singaporean or Malaysian customers was used to support different requirements and simplify the administration process. New customers are able to register online on their first tailoring order submission. Existing customers are able to check their order status and collection agreement.

Screenshots