Things could be about to change for retailers looking to boost their order fulfillment efforts.
A new and unique offering from Scandit is giving retailers the ability to cut their costs and improve fulfillment rates – without expensive changes to infrastructure or processes.
Order fulfillment is a tough game to be in. Razor-thin margins and slow and labor-intensive processes mean making money from online orders, especially for e-grocery, is a tough task.
But despite this, fulfilling online orders is still a crucial part of omnichannel retail and a way for retailers to grab a piece of the loyalty pie.
Optimizing fulfillment efforts is high on the agenda for retail execs.
rate fulfillment efficiency as a top 3 digital investment area in 2023 and 89% say optimizing fulfillment is key to digital profits.
But where do retailers look? Where can they optimize?
The good news is we’ve looked for them. Through working with some of the leading retailers across the globe, we uncovered their pain points and invested a lot of time and resources into finding ways to solve them.
And even better, we have pinpointed precisely where the biggest time savings can be made and headaches removed – and come up with a solution.
The end of inconvenient in-store order fulfillment
Through new and improved advanced capabilities, Scandit is bringing cost-effective scalability to existing order fulfillment processes.
Boosting productivity and efficiency across the entire operation – from picking to pickup.
Built with the worker in mind, these new capabilities represent a unique offering that brings significant benefits to retailers. With pre-built and intuitive smartphone user interfaces and easy integration into existing apps, worker onboarding is fast so retailers can start now.
Below, we break down exactly how these new capabilities accelerate existing processes and deliver results for retailers.
Order picking
We’ve all experienced it. Spending ages trying to find the right spice in the cupboard or getting frustrated as you look for a piece of paper in the stack on your desk.
It’s the same for picking items for an online order. Huge amounts of time are spent trying to find certain items. Among a sea of similar-looking bottles, jars, boxes and packets, order pickers are under pressure to find the right item, fast.
It’s estimated that the cost of in-store picking can account for approximately 8% of the total order value. So any savings here significantly impact profitability.
How about cutting the time spent looking for items on a shelf in half and reducing picking errors? The recently launched MatrixScan Find allows pickers to scan shelf-edge labels and instantly highlight the right product for picking using augmented reality (AR).
Not only does it help pickers find the right item, it prevents them from picking the wrong one too. Visual, haptic and audio feedback add a layer of security, even when labels and products don’t match, to ensure the customer gets what they want.
Once the right items are found, they need to be scanned and placed in the correct bins. Faced with scanning thousands of items during their shift, the ergonomic, high performance and adaptive scanning from SparkScan supports workers and reduces the mental and physical burden on pickers.
Workers can scan successive items, one-handed and at any angle with minimal physical effort. We obsessed over the user experience so our customers don’t have to.
SparkScan combines seamlessly with MatrixScan Find and both come with a pre-built intuitive user interface. Saving time for both IT teams and operations teams as integration with existing store applications can be done with just a few lines of code and rollout can take place in a few days.
Order assembly
With picking time and effort saved and the customer ready to collect, the order must be assembled.
It’s at this point in the process that the ‘finding the right items quickly’ headache re-appears. Most grocery orders contain multiple items stored in different locations. Finding all the correct elements in the staging area is a slow process. Scanning or visually inspecting labels one by one.
And with the customer waiting, the clock is ticking.
The same multiple barcode scanning and AR assistance that MatrixScan Find offers pickers are just as valuable here.
The ability to instantly see which items are needed is a huge time saver for the worker. And haptic feedback from the device helps with clarity in a noisy environment. Ensuring a speedy service and satisfying customers as they roll in and out of the collection area.
In-store and curbside order pickup
For orders that contain age-restricted goods or that require proof of ID, we have another new shiny toy to assist workers.
When ID checks are needed, the workers responsible for handing over goods are often left to perform this check manually. At this point in the process, they are in a rush too. Trying to hand over orders quickly to avoid disgruntled customers.
Visually inspecting an ID doesn’t record an accurate date or run an official check to see if the ID is fake. And there’s little to no proof of compliance with regulations for age-restricted goods.
Our ID scanning software solves all these problems by scanning and checking IDs to verify them in one second. Securing an audit trail and removing the burden from workers and the possibility of human error when reading dates of birth that puts compliance at risk.
For some regions, IDs can be checked for authenticity. With grocers often lacking in-store connectivity, all processing occurs on the device, reducing fraud exposure without requiring internet access.
Losing a license to sell specific goods like alcohol has an enormous impact on a retailer’s revenue. Not just from those items but also from customers looking to aggregate their purchases and get everything done in one shopping trip who go elsewhere.
Staging area audit
With multiple orders coming and going at all times of the day, the staging area can become busy and confusing. Keeping it tidy reduces worker stress and boosts productivity.
When orders get canceled or expire, it’s imperative that workers can see at a glance the status of orders and what can go back on the shelves, especially when perishable items are included.
However, manually auditing the staging area is time-consuming. Checking all the order labels and scanning at regular intervals slows replenishment efforts. This has a knock-on effect for other tasks on the worker’s to-do list.
Our MatrixScan AR capability gives workers immediate insight into order status. It provides a real-time overview using easy-to-read traffic light visuals so workers can quickly determine what needs to happen with each order.
Summary
Our capabilities have the potential to transform the in-store order fulfillment process. Solving worker headaches and speeding up tasks that deliver big benefits for retailers. Improving each part of the process has a compounding effect that boosts the overall efficiency of order fulfillment operations.
Fulfilling more orders with the same amount of resources lowers costs and scales the operation in the direction of the holy grail – profitability.
With just a few lines of code, these capabilities are easily integrated into existing applications. And pre-built user interfaces based on months of research and testing are a valuable solution for retailers that wish to avoid the burdensome task of building a tool from scratch.
It’s a ready-to-go, unique solution to bring fulfillment rates up, and costs down.
Learn more about our ISOF solution and get started here.
