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Y
ou would be hard pressed to find a
retailer who doesn’t want greater
insight into what is happening within
its stores and warehouses – and why it’s
happening. Perhaps that’s why Zebra’s 2019
Intelligent Enterprise Index revealed a record
number of retailers accelerating their efforts
to become ‘intelligent.’
According to the annual study, the global
retail sector’s ‘intelligence score’ increased
6.7% points from 2018 to 2019 to reach
62.1. That’s only one point lower than the
highest-scoring healthcare sector. It also
represents the largest year-over-year gain
among all sectors.
Why intelligence scores matter more
than ever
Retailers are now highly focused on
‘returns.’ They want to know how they
keep customers returning to their stores
amid fierce competition and how to
minimise product returns. They also want
to understand how best to maximise their
return on investment (ROI) for any new
resources dedicated to accomplishing such
goals. Sometimes, that entails augmenting
or expanding the workforce. In other
cases, it requires process re-engineering or
workflow automation. But it always involves
technology in some capacity.
Given that two of the key technology
platforms used to derive and deliver IoT-
powered intelligence at the edge of the
enterprise have already been deployed in most
retail environments today, it’s no surprise that
retailers see potential, and a potentially strong
return, with IoT-based solutions.
Barcode-based systems and mobile
devices are highly versatile and could
quickly be configured to work within more
advanced IoT-based architectures. Almost
immediately, handheld mobile computers,
smartphones, tablets and scanners could
deliver expanded intelligence to front-line-
store associates to improve point-of-sale
(POS), restocking, physical inventory counts
and inventory lookup, among many other
actions that help to improve the speed and
quality of customer service and secure sales.
These same devices can be utilised to
simultaneously improve back-of-house
logistics: shipping, receiving, inventory
www.intelligentcio.com
Mark Thomson, Director of Retail and
Hospitality EMEA, at Zebra Technologies
“
BARCODE-BASED
SYSTEMS AND
MOBILE DEVICES
ARE HIGHLY
VERSATILE AND
COULD QUICKLY
BE CONFIGURED
TO WORK WITHIN
MORE ADVANCED
IOT-BASED
ARCHITECTURES.
management, buy-online-pick-up-in-store
(BOPIS) fulfilment and more.
They could also be combined with other
technologies such as prescriptive analytics
engines, sensors, RFID locationing systems
and near-field communications (NFC)
technologies to offer near-perfect clarity into
retailers’ operations and produce the small,
actionable data that makes a big impact on
the bottom line.
Yet, retailers aren’t investing as heavily in IoT
solutions as one might think based on this
INTELLIGENTCIO
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