The Client
Interline Brands is headquartered in Florida and is one of the largest wholesale distributors and direct marketers of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) products for non-industrial businesses in the United States. The company employs over 4,300 people and generated $1.4B in revenues. The Home Depot acquired Interline Brands for $1.6B in July 2015.
Interline Brands’ primary target customers are professional contractors, hardware retailers, facilities maintenance operators, and small mom-and-pop establishments including locksmiths, plumbers, and electricians. The company launched LOB specific applications in summer 2015 (developed in-house with help from a third-party app developer) so its customers can more efficiently place orders for equipment and tools during the day and get items delivered the next day, as opposed to having to do it in front of a computer at night or even by calling it in for a two-day delivery timeframe. With this mobile app, Interline Brands’ customers can scan products like circuit boxes and place orders. The barcode scanning capability on these applications is powered by Scandit. What Interline Brands appreciates most about this solution to the order entry and fulfillment conundrum is the ease with which all its customers, including small businesses, are able to place orders, save time, and shorten the procurement gap.
Relationship with Scandit
Interline Brands uses Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK to help its customers streamline overall processes and generate operational efficiencies. The company aims to build more awareness about the order entry applications and encourage use amongst its 175,000-plus customers.
Interline recently partnered with a third-party developer to launch proprietary, line of business (LOB)-specific mobile apps. The apps let customers more efficiently place next-day orders for equipment and tools during the workday. Previously, customers had to place orders via PC at night or place phone orders for two-day delivery. With the new mobile apps, Interline customers can now instantly place an order for an item like a circuit box by simply scanning it. Interline relied on the Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK to deliver barcode scanning functionality to its mobile LOB solutions.
Scandit Barcode Scanner SDK enables enterprise-grade scanning performance for all major barcode symbologies in challenging conditions, including low light and damaged or blurry barcodes. It also provides an analytical dashboard with a variety of metrics for benchmarking scan performance, such as location and time of the scan.
Streamlining Processes and Saving Time
As a result, Interline’s customers can streamline overall processes and generate operational efficiencies. The company especially appreciates the ease with which even its smallest customers can now place orders. This produces significant time savings and helps close the gap between the time an item is needed and the time it is actually procured. Interline is currently building awareness of its barcode scanning-enabled apps among its 175,000 customers.
As adoption rates rise, the company will evaluate Scandit on criteria such as ease of use, uptime, and speed. Interline will then determine if it wants to utilize more back-end Scandit functionality, such as cloud services and analytics. The company is also considering expanding its use cases for Scandit beyond barcode scanning to more sophisticated activities, such as image recognition.
What Lies Ahead for Interline
While Interline Brands today uses Scandit only for barcode identification, it sees more sophisticated use cases like image recognition as being viable in the future.
