Mobility in retail: enhancing the client facing service

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Mobility in retail: enhancing the client facing service.

Retailers today face many challenges, from accurately predicting customer behaviour to grappling with extended and global supply chains.  However, for all traditional bricks and mortar retailers, execution of a positive customer experience in store is key to success of the business. In a challenging economic climate, the differentiator for retailers is often not dependant on just pricing strategies, but the client facing service they offer.

Providing availability of the right products at the right price, backed up by the right information to allow customers to make an informed choice can make the difference between success and failure.

Such truisms, however obvious they may be, are far from easy to achieve. In-store, the perennial problem areas continue to hamper progress, including availability, shrinkage, compliance, promotion, service and productivity.

What is mobility in retail in-store applications?

Mobility of technology is often achieved through the provision of some form of hand-held computing device, which can be used to implement a process in software at the point of activity or where the work needs to take place.

Such solutions can vary from the simplicity of single application, stand alone technology to wirelessly connected multi-tasking computer platform, complete with printing and automatic data capture (bar-code, RFID) capability.

Mobility for retail applications can be summarised simply by the end results.  Analysis of retail mobility implementations since 2004 shows that the benefits of mobility can include:

          Being 40% more effective at reducing out of stocks
          Improving product availability by 1-2%
          Reducing time to take inventory by 84%
          Reducing wastage by 20% through accurate stock recording and timely and optimal price reduction
          Speeding up transaction time at POS to improve throughput

Increasingly it is the more sophisticated and flexible solutions provided by todays mobile computing platforms which are becoming more and more attractive to retailers.  This is due to the acceptance of Wi-Fi as an everyday technology and the advantages it brings in being always connected, allowing instantaneous update of data, and real time provision of information to store employees at the point of activity.

Mobility is about collecting real time accurate data at the point of activity and providing access to relevant task related information where the work happens.  In retail this allows more staff to be available on the shop floor, where the customers are, and not hidden in back rooms.  The benefit of concentrating staff availability in customer facing areas can have a marked impact in the perception of service offered.

Mobile Retail in-store applications

Mobile retail solutions relate to many of the common activities undertaken on the sale area and backroom: Price and stock management, task store and asset management, merchandising, inter-store transfer, transaction and security applications.  The benefits are numerous, ranging from reduction of revenue loss, to higher availability of stock, or from queue-busting solutions to product location.

One leading multi-format supermarket chain in the UK, implemented Intermec handheld devices for their stock and price control and as a result of this the floor staff became 40% more effective. Another European, the hypermarket chain, introduced Intermecs handheld computers to 35 of its outlets which produced a marked improvement in the order/ delivery flow, cutting working times and eliminating the possibilities of error.

Budgeting for mobility

In deciding to deploy a mobile solution, one of the many decisions which face retail organisations is whether to integrate industrial grade rugged devices or to use commercially available non-rugged devices.  Since budgets are a key influencer in the decision making process, price is often a major concern. 

However, price, in relation to cost, is one time expenditure and a snap-shot in the business lifecycle. Retailers must also consider operating costs, which are ongoing and carry ramifications that can greatly affect the business over time.

Gartner group estimate that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a mobile device is between $2000 and $3000 per year, broken down in the following way:

         Technical support at 13%
         Administration at 23%
         Operations at 40%

Totalling 76% (with capital outlay equating to the remaining 24 %.)

Mobilitys short-term and long-term benefits
Addressing the challenges of availability, shrinkage, compliance, promotion, service and productivity is an ongoing battle and is one way retail organisations increase their sales or reduce costs. 

Initiatives to introduce improve or remove process in the areas of security, task and store management, merchandising, transaction, stock, price and asset management are important elements in achieving this goal.

Many retailers have already discovered the benefits of a mobility platform, enabling them to step change their business performance. Mobility has a role to play in implementing the many activities involved in these processes in an efficient and effective way.  Whilst not a panacea, mobility can ensure that accurate real time data is collected where the work happens and that relevant information to drive decision and action is delivered to the point of activity.

However, there are many challenges which must be addressed in considering mobility.  These are not intended to deter the retailer, but to highlight the lessons learned over many years of best practice retail mobility deployment. They are factors which when considered and planned for as part of the overall mobility strategy can ensure smooth project implementation and acceptable TCO over its lifespan.

No matter the goal, retailers must consider individual business and customer needs when planning their mobility strategy to ensure smooth project implementation and exemplary performance.