How Mobile Data Capture Makes Seamless Retail a Reality

Retail has entered the seamless era. Consumers now use mobile devices for on-demand communication, navigation and information. This has produced an expectation of convenience and immediacy in every area of shoppers’ lives that would have been unimaginable less than 10 years ago.

The ongoing, mobile-driven shift in consumer lifestyle has prompted retail to evolve from a push into a pull model. As a result, retailers need total supply chain transparency that allows them to track and trace all products at all times. Download our new white paper to learn more.

Customers may order in-store for home delivery, order at home for in-store pickup, redeem digital discounts in-store, digitally pay in advance for “click and collect” purchases, or engage in countless other combinations of physical and digital shopping. In addition, a variety of connected “smart devices” are now directly linking shoppers to digital purchases.

The role of the store associate is also changing. Shoppers expect the same immediate expert assistance in-store that is delivered online. Associates must have instant access to detailed product and inventory data. And with stores increasingly serving as online fulfillment hubs, store employees must often perform picking, packing, and other unfamiliar distribution tasks.

As a result, the retail supply chain needs to become responsive to real-time shifts in demand. Retailers need total supply chain transparency that allows them to track and trace all products at all times. Back-end functions such as warehouse management must be performed with maximum efficiency and operational insight.

Fortunately, mobile data capture solutions provide the unifying foundation of seamless retail. For maximum efficiency, retailers can embed mobile data capture functionality into an app. Rather than having to invest in costly dedicated scanning devices, retailers can instead leverage consumer or rugged smartphones and tablets. This greatly reduces equipment overhead, and may open the possibility of using a bring your own device (BYOD) strategy. The need to train employees and customers on unfamiliar devices is also eliminated.

By using mobile devices to retrieve data from product barcodes, retailers can ideally blend the physical and digital worlds. Mobile data capture enables a true “bricks and clicks” retail environment where customers have one seamless experience. Furthermore, it delivers real-time analytical insight into shopper behavior and inventory movement that cannot be gleaned by any other means.

For more information on how mobile data capture, and barcode scanning technology from Scandit, can support your seamless retail efforts download the white paper “Enabling Seamless Retail with Mobile Data Capture”.