Physical retail stores must support online sales and fulfillment; a large step beyond what their role in the marketplace has traditionally been. As McKinsey & Company so aptly wrote in 2022, “with so many innovations on the horizon, and consumer demand intensifying for faster delivery speed at low cost, retailers must act now to identify and deploy the right fulfillment model for their business and their customers. The world is changing, and slow movers will be left behind.” That time is now, and many retailers are scrambling to join the fulfillment movement.
While the pandemic hastened our omnichannel purchasing power with order fulfillment facilitated by retail store locations and warehouses alike, those retail businesses who embraced this opportunity were the ones who garnered the most revenue. If you’re selling online and in-store, you must ensure that your physical locations support each way your customers want to shop. From digital to physical, both will be part of the customer’s buying journeys. It’s essential to have an engaging sales floor that facilitates the offline/in-person shopping experience for your consumer. At the same time, you must be optimized for online order fulfillment including in-store pickup, shipping and local delivery.
“Retailers are experimenting with more gray or dark stores for fulfillment,” according to McKinsey & Company. “In this model, which has been deployed by many retailers, physical locations are turned into temporary or permanent fulfillment nodes to enable faster delivery.”
We have witnessed first-hand the numerous advantages, versatility, and capabilities of Danavation’s Digital Smart Labels™ transforming the face of retail. While this sector has revelled in the ease and multi-benefits of adopting this technology, retail implementation is just the beginning. Businesses have dealt with frustrating challenges as their standard inventory strategy was no longer applicable and needed to be augmented to continue to supply as their customer-base had become accustomed to. To assist staff with picking and restocking inventory, while ensuring location accuracy of products is Danavation Technologies’ market-ready proprietary software, Stock2Lite and Pick2Lite.
Danavation is always striving to deliver new multi-faceted products to market, and these platforms do just that. Geared at improving in-store efficiencies and overall improved experiences, these platforms are a game-changer for business owners, and their staff, and can stream-line and vastly improve accuracy and decrease labour costs when it comes to fulfilling online orders or stocking and restocking shelves. A necessity when staffing locations effectively can be challenging.
With Stock2Lite, the store associate scans a product UPC code, and the system will send a signal to the Digital Smart Label™ linked to the product you are looking for, and will flash an LED to draw attention and lead you to the exact location the item is located. Businesses are spending more money in labour when fulfilling online orders by using their store clerks to complete the order. To keep up with buyer demand and to facilitate ease as it applies to fulfilling orders, ecommerce websites are taking notice of this technology and implementing it as a productivity enhancement tool. Accuracy, timesaving, and empowered, positive staff equates to overall efficiencies and in turn, cost saving.
The Pick2Lite application can be used when a customer places an online order and the employee needs to find all the products in store to complete the order. When staff are fulfilling an order, they need to know where the product is located throughout the store and will need to take more time to ensure the correct products are picked for the order. The store clerk can scan the product UPC code for each product on the order which can trigger the lights on the Digital Smart Label™linked to the product to flash thus allowing the store clerk to collect the products from the shelves quickly by just looking for the flashing label.
Click here to learn more: https://danavation.com/stock2lite-pick2lite
“Over the past couple of years, brands have made considerable strides in setting their stores up to fulfill e-commerce orders,” explains Forbes. “They’ve had to re-configure the in-store technology, train staff on new responsibilities, and perfect in-store pick-up services. A primary reason for the transition is the increasing demand for faster delivery.” Danavation systems are an ideal fit for retail locations to manage inventory while increasing operational efficiency. Adopting this technology is the first step to digital transformation and an ideal solution to retail fulfillment.
