{"id":43410,"date":"2019-11-14T14:55:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T14:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=43410"},"modified":"2019-11-14T15:38:22","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T15:38:22","slug":"is-the-retail-sector-making-the-most-of-iot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/11\/14\/is-the-retail-sector-making-the-most-of-iot\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the retail sector making the most of IoT?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite the retail sector realising the potential of IoT devices, Mark Thomson, Director of Retail and Hospitality EMEA, at Zebra Technologies, believes opportunities are being lost to maximise their effectiveness in the face of increased competition. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You would be hard pressed to find a retailer who\ndoesn\u2019t want greater insight into what is happening within its stores and\nwarehouses \u2013 and why it\u2019s happening. Perhaps that\u2019s why Zebra\u2019s 2019\nIntelligent Enterprise Index<\/a> revealed a record number of retailers accelerating\ntheir efforts to become \u2018intelligent.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the\nannual study, the global retail sector\u2019s \u2018intelligence score\u2019 increased 6.7% points\nfrom 2018 to 2019 to reach 62.1. That\u2019s only one point lower than the\nhighest-scoring healthcare sector. It also represents the largest\nyear-over-year gain among all sectors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why intelligence scores matter more than ever<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retailers are now highly focused on \u2018returns.\u2019 They want to know\nhow they keep customers returning to their stores amidst fierce competition and\nhow to minimise product returns. They also want to understand how best to maximise\ntheir return on investment (ROI) for any new resources dedicated to\naccomplishing such goals. Sometimes, that entails augmenting or expanding the\nworkforce. In other cases, it requires process re-engineering or workflow\nautomation. But it always involves technology in some capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s no surprise that retailers see potential, and a potentially strong return, with IoT-based solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barcode-based systems and mobile devices are highly\nversatile and could quickly be configured to work within more advanced\nIoT-based architectures. Almost immediately, handheld mobile computers,\nsmartphones, tablets and scanners could deliver expanded intelligence to front-line-store associates to improve\npoint-of-sale (POS), restocking, physical inventory counts and inventory\nlookup, among many other actions that help to improve the speed and quality of\ncustomer service and secure sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These same\ndevices can be utilised to simultaneously improve back-of-house logistics:\nshipping, receiving, inventory management, buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS)\nfulfillment and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They could also be combined with other technologies such as prescriptive\nanalytics engines, sensors, RFID locationing systems and near-field\ncommunications (NFC) technologies to offer near-perfect clarity into retailers\u2019\noperations and produce the small, actionable data that makes a big impact on\nthe bottom line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, retailers aren\u2019t investing as heavily in IoT solutions as one might think based on this year\u2019s study findings. <\/a>Despite the aggressive year-over-year growth in their \u2018intelligence\u2019 score, retailers\u2019 average spend on IoT is the lowest among all surveyed sectors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect this is because retailers have spent\nthe last few years thoroughly evaluating the many different IoT strategy and\nsolution options available and are just now starting to move into the execution\nphase. (Only 58% of retailers actually have a\nwell-defined IoT vision and are executing on this plan right now.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others (41%) have yet to scale their IoT\nsolutions company-wide. They\u2019re likely testing different models in select\nstores in order to optimise mobile device configurations, refine workflow\napplications, shore up security and solicit both worker and customer feedback on\nthe impact of such technologies on in-store shopping experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spending should increase as pilot programmes\nconclude and retailers become more confident in their strategy and ability to\nbring comprehensive IoT systems to scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real ROI of \u2018intelligence\u2019 is measured by action\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last few years, the primary\ngoal for retailers has been to gain greater visibility into their operations. The ability to fully sense and analyse\nwhat customers and associates are doing within a store or warehouse can be\ninvaluable. Definitive data about what is or isn\u2019t happening informs inventory\nmanagement strategies, decisions about the digitalisation of customer\nexperiences and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, the real power of IoT \u2013 the real return \u2013\ncomes when those lessons are turned into measurable action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, only 55% of retailers share information from their IoT solutions with employees in real time or near-real time. And only 38% share the actionable intelligence with all<\/em> of their employees. That\u2019s a missed opportunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you know what issues are plaguing your\nstore or warehouse, and you even have a firm grasp on why those issues are\noccurring, then why wouldn\u2019t you prescribe a specific action to a worker to\nresolve them immediately and mitigate recurrences? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why wouldn\u2019t you articulate the \u2018best next\nsteps\u2019 to take with their current mobile and barcode-based systems already in\nplace in order to maintain pricing accuracy and stocked shelves? Why not give\nassociates tools they need to more quickly locate items for customers or\nexpedite checkout to avoid losing sales? And why not deploy a team immediately\nto investigate suspected theft or fraud and adjust asset protection processes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retailers who utilise the IoT-powered technologies at their disposal right now to both capture intelligence at the edge and take direct action on it are the ones who will most successfully capture their edge as both customer demands and competitive pressures intensify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, check out Zebra\u2019s 2019\nIntelligent Enterprise Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the retail sector realising the potential of IoT devices, Mark Thomson, Director of Retail and Hospitality EMEA, at Zebra Technologies, believes opportunities are being lost to maximise their effectiveness in the face of increased competition. You would be hard pressed to find a retailer who doesn\u2019t want greater insight into what is happening within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":43413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5307,139,106,809,4320],"tags":[10676,10677,284,10675,7634,775,10674,630,124,641,6825],"class_list":["post-43410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-industry-expert","category-mobile","category-more-news","category-retail","tag-barcode","tag-bopis","tag-iot","tag-mark-thomson","tag-mobile-computers","tag-retail","tag-retailers","tag-scanners","tag-smartphones","tag-tablets","tag-zebra"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43410"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43418,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43410\/revisions\/43418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}