Retailers Confirm Product Location with Mobile Putaway

| Retail

smartphone scanning barcode

A lot can happen to a product during the retail putaway process. Fortunately, mobile data capture can ensure easy, accurate item putaway for retailers.

By capturing barcode data with traditional mobile devices, retailers can instantly record goods as they are put away. Mobile data capture is flexible enough to effectively confirm the placement of items on store shelves, in back rooms and warehouses, in storage bins and containers, or in other locations. This ensures all inventory is put away when and where it is supposed to be located.

As a result, the time and effort needed to find items is reduced. A single scan captures product location data, which can be distributed across a retailer’s supply chain. This data can then serve as a baseline for other mobile retail logistics activities, such as track and trace and order picking.

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In addition, mobile putaway closes off a crucial point of potential loss in the retail supply chain. Once items are received, they can accidentally or purposely be diverted from their correct destination. Without mobile putaway, there is no easy way to locate received items.

Mobile putaway enables retailers to confirm the proper placement of products. If they are misplaced, barcode scanning at time of putaway still allows retailers to easily find goods. And if an item is received and not scanned for putaway during a set period of time, retailers can immediately begin searching for the missing product before it disappears from the supply chain entirely.

Statistics from the National Retail Federation (NRF) indicate inventory shrink cost the US retail industry $45.2 billion in 2015. Therefore, loss prevention represents a significant source of enterprise cost reduction.

Finally, traditional mobile devices have a total cost of ownership (TCO) up to five times lower than TCO of dedicated scanning devices. By utilizing a bring your own device (BYOD) strategy, retailers can reduce mobile putaway costs even further.