Making the Most of Mobile to Power Next-Gen Stores

Mobile services are booming in retail ranging from shoppers using mobile apps while in stores to sales associates using mobile devices to deliver omnichannel experiences to shoppers. However, many retailers have struggled managing their mobile deployments correctly with challenges sometimes outweighing benefits. The “Optimizing Mobile Services to Power Next-Gen Omnichannel Stores,” webinar uncovered best practices used by retailers deploying mobile services to create seamless experiences that meet the demands of today’s omnichannel shopper. It explored how to leverage the power of a well-managed mobile strategy to track inventory and orders, product look up, POS, and more. Presented and sponsored by Stratix and Zebra Technologies, hosted by RIS News, it featured industry experts Dipesh Hinduja, dIrector of mobile solutions architects with Stratix, and Tim Kane, retail solutions industry consultant for North America Retail with Zebra Technologies. It was moderated by Joe Skorupa, editorial director of RIS News. The full transcript is below as well as the slides from the presentation. Joe Skorupa: Welcome everyone to the “Optimizing Mobile Services to Power Next-Gen Omnichannel Stores” webinar, which is hosted by RIS News and presented by Stratix and Zebra. I'm Joe Skorupa, Editorial Director of RIS News and I'm really glad to be with us today. Mobile services are booming and range from shoppers using mobile apps while in storage to sales associates using mobile devices to deliver omnichannel experiences to shoppers. However, many retailers have discovered they need to manage the mobile deployment correctly to avoid problems outweighing benefits. In this webinar, retail experts uncover best practices used by retailers deploying mobile services, to create seamless experiences that meet the demands of today's omnichannel shopper. We will discuss solving problems in such areas as: Effective IP support, lifecycle management, application management and helpdesk functionality. We will also take a day-in-the-life approach to modern sales associates, and then discuss the tactical issues that the right mobile strategy can solve at the ground level, and how to leverage the power of a well-managed mobile strategy to track inventory and orders, particle lookup, POS and much more. Now, here with us today to discuss this important topic, are Dipesh Hinduja of Stratix and Tim Kane of Zebra. Dipesh is a senior IT manager and technical architect at Stratix. He specializes in guiding and maturing retail teams and business operations that must keep up with the rapid change of pace of modern technology and innovation. Welcome Dipesh, we're so glad you could be with us today. Dipesh Hinduja: Thanks Joe. Thanks for having me, I'm looking forward to giving my expertise on this webinar today. Skorupa: I'm looking forward to our discussion Dipesh. Joining us, as you know, is Tim Kane, retail solutions industry consultant, North American retail for Zebra. Tim is a global leader in products and services that extend real0time visibility into organization's assets, people and transactions for retail and hospitality organizations. Tim identifies industry trends and develops strategies that embrace and leverage change, and the creative will utilize leading edge technology and service solutions to enhance business critical systems that lead to distinct competitive advantages. I'm glad you could join us again and be with us on our webinar series. Tim, welcome. Tim Kane: Thank you, Joe. I appreciate the opportunity to join you and Dipesh today. I think we have a really exciting topic that we're going to discuss and I'm looking forward to spending the time with you covering these exciting items. Skorupa: What I want to do is start with pointing out that many of the trends and topics we're going to be discussing today were recently covered in depth in RIS News’ special report titled; “Engaging Mobile Tech For Shoppers and Associates,” which was sponsored by Stratix. For those who want to see the full report with retailer case studies and white paper research, go to www.risnews.com and go to the Special Reports page. Now, we tell stories that are evolving at a rapid pace. As a quick exercise, I recently made a list of in-store mobile functions and services that are rapidly being implemented by retailers today. I started with web access for associates and Wi-Fi for customers. I continued with mobile POS, a host of back office application,s and then started ticking off things like IoT devices and video surveillance to name a few. The list reached 25 before I stopped, and I actually could not fit them all on this slide. Now, of course, not every retailer will implement every one of these functions and services. Many of these are rapidly being considered essential for increasing operational performance such as real-time inventory, loss prevention, personalized marketing, or for increasing customer satisfaction such as omnichannel engagement, and guest Wi-Fi, and for increasing employee efficiency such as mobile POS and continuous training. One final note, before we begin with our panelists, this list of local supported functions and services, will not be getting any shorter. The question I have for you Dipesh is, which mobile device services and functions are important for a retailer to rollout to aid shoppers while they're in the store and why? Please provide examples if you can. Hinduja: Sure. Thanks for that Joe. I appreciate the question. Now, I'm going to approach this from the point of helping the shopper while they're in the store with a retail associate and focused technologies. We all know that omnichannel is really giving the consumer a great amount of information as they come into our stores and it makes it important that the people that they interact with in the stores are able to help them do more than just what they could do on their own. Consumer self-service is a great thing, but retail store associates need to be able to provide them a little bit more than if they just did it on their own. Features such as the endless aisle or location-aware wayfinding in the larger stores, and even scan-and-go could all make these consumers very self-sufficient and very empowered. They need to be complemented by store associates who could tell them just a little bit more. A good example is a consumer app that may be able to help the customer get information about a product by scanning a QR code off of the shelf label. When they do that, they are able to find out more about the product and know whether or not they want to buy it. When a store associate does that same thing, they should be able to tell where the stock is for that device, or for that product, if it's in the store, or maybe it's in a nearby store. Maybe they could find out if there's a promotion on that product and it helps that consumer maybe pick what they want based off of the savings possible. Or maybe they could just give more warranty options that are not obvious just from looking at that product. The point is that, while the consumer is enabled, the store associate is enabled differently and could make them help the consumer make a better decision and provide value to that consumer. Of course, that is assuming that we want our store associates to be interacting with the consumer. There are some situations where we want less store associate interaction with the consumer and that's where we start talking about things like BOPIS - where they're buying online and then pickup in-store. Mobile technology for the store associates and for the store managers can still make a difference there. When you have location aware apps on your consumers' phones, they could get notifications on the store associates' phones and be able to use those devices to then ensure that the consumer gets what they're looking for in a timely manner. Additionally, if they are enabling scan-and-go within the store, the consumer may be able to ask the retail associate for some additional information and possibly transfer what they scanned on their device onto the store associate device, so the store associate could help close out that transaction. Mobile POS, instant clientelling, things of that nature, make the store associate enabling the consumer to have a frictionless experience throughout. Skorupa: That's an interesting point you made about shelf labels. When you think about it, shelf labels are actually gateways to opportunity, opportunity for getting messaging out to the shopper, and if it's scanned on a device, they're getting important information over to the store associates. These things are enabled by mobile devices and they're very important. Hinduja: Absolutely. I think the shelf label is a great example of enabling the consumer, but it's also a great example of enabling the store associate to be mobile and be where the consumer is. Skorupa: That was a good example, I’m glad that you brought that into our discussion. Now, Tim, here's the question to you. Which mobile technology capabilities are important for associates and managers to use to optimize store productivity? Store productivity is the issue here I'd like to discuss. In addition to that, if you want to take a point and be on this, which mobile technology capabilities are important for those associates and managers to use to optimize store sales and customer satisfaction? Kane: Thanks Joe. That's a great question because what we're seeing right now is, retailers are continuing to try to get more efficient in stores and labor is always a high cost for retailers. Retailers today are using technologies, mobile technologies like tablets and handheld devices to give store associates more power. If you think about a store associate today that has a handheld device that can use any number of applications. Similar to our smartphone, we just download apps onto the device, not quite that easy, but you can equip a store associate with any number of applications. They could be tasking applications, they could be inventory applications, they could be cycle counting, applications, ordering or receiving applications. All of those are allowing the associate to become more productive so that the store runs more efficiently. When you consider, as I mentioned earlier, that labor is such a big component of the overall cost of running a store, the more productive your associates can be, the better. Then, if you look into the management roles, what we're seeing today is, many of the managers are using tablets. Tablets give you a little bit more area to look at and allow a manager to look at reports during the day, on the store floor as opposed to being in the back room and sitting in front of a desk. The managers are increasing their productivity as well because they have a better opportunity to manage the associates who are on the floor. They also have a better opportunity to respond to issues that come up when they're on the floor as opposed to being called out of the back office. They can get onto the floor quickly and interact with the associates, or they can interact with the customers. Essentially what it's doing is, it's just taking the entire store team, the management team, and the store associates, increasing their productivity, and making the store run more efficiently. I think the mobility of those two devices in the hands of the store associates and managers have made tremendous strides in helping stores run more efficiently. Skorupa: I load a piece and that's six months or so ago, Tim and I basically summed up the theme of it is, if you're a retailer with multiple stores, and in many cases, the retailers who read RIS News have 50, 100, 200 500 stores or more. You're basically fighting a battle every day against chaos on every store manager, and every store in the chain is going to really nail perfect execution. You're hoping to get an average across the store and that average is nowhere near 100%. Any tool you have in the battle against chaos and mobile devices are one of the greatest tools you can have, would certainly help you win that battle. Kane: That's true Joe. Along those lines, one of the things that the mobile devices do, is they present a standardized approach for the associates. Every associate using the application has to use it in a certain way. Hopefully the retailers are designing it in a way that's going to improve and increase the productivity of everybody. It takes out some of the guesswork that the associates may have had before they had a device in their hands to walk them through the different tasks that they're responsible for. Skorupa: As I go around the retail industry, I see mobile devices in certain chains, but I certainly don't see it in the majority of chains. There's still a lot of hesitancy and reluctance, "Hey, let's face it. It's a new cost." I think we can rest assured that the productivity gains are real and we know that there's going to be more roll-outs in retail chains with mobile devices. How is this shaping up? How do you see retailers approaching this? Are they concerned about the level of investment? Well, what is the reason we don't see more retailers doing it and why are we seeing an increasing look at it, something they're putting into their 2020 plans? Hinduja: The very first thing I'm seeing is, a lot of retailers are talking about the expense of having to train a very transient staff in their retail associates. One of the things that they're saying is, "Well, if I put this app out there and I've got it on this mobile device, I've trained up the people who are here today, but how do I keep that ongoing as my associates switch out?" whether it be a grocery store, or high-end clothing store, or even an electronic store. That's why you see a lot of them are going to put this technology into the hands of managers and even the field managers before that, before they put it into the end user, the store associates’ hands. Part of the answer that we provide to that is, how do you deploy, and support and educate your users on an ongoing basis? When the end users, the store associates, do have questions, do they have an effective support mechanism to be able to call up and ask those questions, not just to say, "Oh, there's something wrong." But also to ask, "How do I?" or "How can I?" A lot of times that's addressed by having an in-app contextual help and making sure the apps are very intuitive and native to the OS of whatever mobile device they're using. A lot of times that could be, "I need to call up a person and have somebody walk me through this." Skorupa: It certainly will lead to ongoing ROI for the implementation. I think that's the key here. No retailer should deploy a technology, or any kind of upgrade in their stores, unless there's a realistic expectation for return on investment. I think that we can say that, when you calculate employee efficiency and you calculate store productivity after deployment of mobile devices, I think that you'll find the numbers are real there. Dipesh, you brought up BOPIS earlier - buy online, pickup in store - and then added to that is BORIS, which is kind of related. It's a buy online return in-store. I think you even mentioned endless aisle ordering. All of these are critical in retail today. My question to you is, how important is having an effective and strong mobile strategy when executing these types of omnichannel services and functions? Hinduja: A mobile strategy cannot be emphasized enough, and especially when you're trying to make a traditional brick-and-mortar store a key part of an omnichannel strategy. I think when we started talking about customers having quick and efficient experiences online or through your app, but then when they get into the store and suddenly they have to fall back to the traditional hunting for an associate to talk with on knowledge about products, or waiting in lines for support or to check out. That's what will break the omnichannel strategy and they're going to avoid going into those stores. As we all know, the stores have a lot of opportunity for up-sell, for cross-sell, for impulse buys or whatever it is, just to even build brand loyalty. I think a good mobile strategy is key here and that they're going to have to prioritize the points of interaction between the consumer, and the store and the store associates, so that they can have a true omnichannel experience. What they started online or in the app, it could go into the store and complete. When we talk about mobile strategy here, we're talking about things like: How do we make it easy for the store associate to do proper clientelling, to find out what that consumer has been doing online and how to help them get to the product that they were looking at quickly and easily, and making sure that the store associate is more than just a warm body. They're an extra piece of information. The mobile technologies really should be enabling that. Let's take it a little bit differently and also talk about how is the store associate actually able to do more if the device is not always working. We all know that the mobile strategy has to include more than just what the app is or how that store associate is doing a little bit more extra functionality. It also has to include how that store associate is supported, the infrastructure that is there, so that that store associate can be effective when they need to be. The infrastructure in the store is not considered as part of the mobile strategy, or if the support mechanism of the devices is not considered, then the store associate is probably not going to use it long-term. The mobile strategy has to go beyond just what that app is, what that functionality is and go towards, "How is this going to be supported in the store, in long-term as the store associate uses it?" I think if you bring all of that together and put that into a true mobile strategy that is full lifecycle, everything that the store associate may be doing, I think that's when you could really get into enabling things like BOPIS, or BORIS, or endless aisle and making sure that the end user, the consumer, the person spending the money is happy going from online, to your app and then into your store. Kane: Dipesh, you make some great points about the importance of the mobile strategy and when you consider it, if you don't have a strategy and you have a customer who has a good online experience with you, and then comes into your store and that falls apart, that creates a real bad taste in the customer's mouth. I think what's happening now, retailers are understanding how important that is, and as they do their deployment of mobile devices, they're making sure that they hit on all the things that Dipesh talked about. Another area that I think they're starting to hit on, which falls into the mobile strategy, and I think is as important as everything else, is the training. When you consider the fact that store associates do have a relatively high turnover rate in retail and with unemployment at low rates right now, it's easy for a store associate to go from one retailer to another, or to go outside of retail. The training aspect becomes important, to be able to have as part of that strategy, training that will allow the associates to get up to speed quickly and become productive in a relatively short amount of time, so that they can start to participate in everything that's going on in the store. Skorupa: What I was going to say, Tim, was that, this gets back to, what is the role of an associate? I know that and maybe our business dreams, an associate would be there to facilitate checkout, and to take cash, and to move people through, and to make it really a quick convenient experience and then, of course, set up the store and make sure the store is executing on all of the visible things associated with having a well run store. The truth is, that associate, just by the fact that they're standing there and working in the store, becomes the face of the store to the shopper. That's what I mean by understanding the role of the associate. The associate actually becomes a problem solver for consumers. The more you enable the associate to solve more problems, to be an effective brand ambassador for the store itself, the more productive and efficient your store is going to become. Of course, that is going to happen just at the fingertips of the associate who is mobile device ready. Now, they become much more of that brand ambassador, much more of that problem solver, really something that's not discussed enough in retail, I think. Mobile strategies can help that. Kane: This is Tim again. You make a great point there. Not only as the brand ambassador, but if you think about it with the idea of BOPIS and everything else that's part of the E-Commerce, they're being asked to do tasks that they typically weren't hired to do. Some store associates, now are pickers. They're going through the store and they're picking the mobile orders. Some store associates are now working in the back room packing and shipping those mobile orders. The more tools and the more information you can provide that associate, which a mobile device allows you to do that, the better they're going to be able to execute those tasks. Skorupa: We've already mentioned store productivity, but I want to get very specific here. I want to drill down from high level to specifics. What I mean by that, and this is a question for you, Tim, is how does a successful install a mobile deployment help optimize such specific tasks as cycle counts, task management, inventory management, HR in training. Tim, can you get a little bit specific on that kind of question? Kane: Yes. I'll attack those areas, probably not necessarily in the same order that you said them, but let's just talk about HR and training first. I mentioned a little bit earlier the importance of being able to train associates. We're seeing with mobile devices now, that training has changed. Training is in many ways becoming gamification and it's 30 to 92nd videos that the store associate uses to get trained. The nice thing about that is, you can measure the progress of the associate and you can retrain them on areas that they may have a deficiency. That's changing dramatically. Cycle counting. If you think about the idea that a store associate would have a mobile device, a handheld device, that they would go around the store and they would be able to do the counting much quicker. They'll be directed, where do they go, what departments they go to, what categories they go to, and many of the devices, if not all of the devices, have a scanner, so they can scan right away and they can't input the quantity number into the screen with a touch screen so that that makes it easier. The other area that we're seeing a lot of productivity is, with tasking where there are software companies out there that have tasking applications that go on the mobile devices, so that when the store associate has that device, they are able to understand what tasks they're responsible for performing. We know when you run a store that, throughout the day there are certain things that have to be done at a certain time. If you can alert the associate that he or she is required to do this task at this time, and then the associate has to report back that the task has been done. Many of these things were done in the past with either pencil or paper, or they were just on the outer memory from somebody who had been in the store for a while. With a mobile device, now you can be much more efficient and make sure that the store is running in a very much more productive fashion by giving these devices to the associates and helping them with their jobs. Skorupa: Now, Tim, can. You help us understand what mobile enablement means in a store today for an associate, and you could start with how a day-in-the-life looks like literally early in the day, et cetera, and progressing through the day and in some fashion, in a storytelling fashion. Could you give us that kind of perspective? Kane: Sure. Yeah. Just you imagine that you're a store associate and when you go into work in the morning, you get a device. You have a single sign on, so it could be as easy as facial recognition, or it could be a fingerprint, or an iris scan. Once you sign in onto the device, the device essentially is going to take you through what you're required to do. Maybe if you're somebody who is opening the store, it gives you all the tasks that you're responsible to cover when the store is being opened. Your next task could be something where you're going to make sure that the inventory, and the out-of-stocks are taken care of. The device will guide you around the store telling you where you have to re-stock or where you have to move merchandise. If you have to get merchandise out of the back room, it will tell you that. As the store is ready to open, and the customers come in, if you have a device then you can use that device to help them with clientelling, help them identify what products are in the store, what products they might be interested in. You can do mobile checkout with them and you can now use the device for line busting. It gives you the ability to do a lot more customer service. You could use it for endless aisles. If somebody comes in, and they're looking for a red sweater, and you don't have a red sweater, you only have the blue one, but you know that there's a red one in the store down the street, you can make an arrangement where they can have that a sweater shipped to their home, or the sweater can be brought to the store that they're in, or they can go down to the other store and pick that up. By doing that you're saving sales, you're making sure that the customer's happy, and you're just becoming much more productive. That's a quick scenario of some of the things that our store associate would be doing. I'm sure there's others, but at a high level that's the kind of a day-in-the-life of an associate. Skorupa: Dipesh, I wanted to give you an opportunity to weigh in here. Thinking in terms of a day-in-the-life of an associate with mobile deployment, what perspective can you give us on what that day would look like? Hinduja: Sure. I mean everything Tim had said is, of course, very true. I think we need to add into it, of course, as Tim had talked about earlier, some of the learning aspects. When that store associate does have some downtime, or they able to use that device to then have a little bit of more education on what they're trying to sell, or maybe the next promotion coming out, et cetera. I think we also need to talk about a little bit of, "Well, what happens when things go wrong during the day? How do they make sure that they could reconcile either their inventory or whatever it is with the more regular cycle counts? Also what happens when the mobile technology itself goes wrong?" Some of these times, associates may have to say to the manager, "Hey, my device's got a cracked screen. I dropped it in the middle of the aisle or accidentally ran over it with a forklift in the back room." Or whatever it may be. There needs to be an easy solution for where they can then get another device and keep going with their regular duties, while somebody else in the store is able to then take that device and get it repaired and make sure that they have a full capacity and a full complement of devices. By the end of the day, these store associates are probably thinking, "I've done so many different things of this. I just need to be able to check out or log out, and make sure that I got my time." And then register their time and get paid really quickly and go home. Skorupa: That was really good. I think that's an interesting approach that retailers have to carefully consider in their management of their mobile strategy, their mobile devices in store is become a lifeline for the sales associate. Along with that, it becomes something that would be a concern if you indicate it, if it was dropped and if there weren't enough devices as a backup to take advantage. It's not just being dropped, it's whatever happens with mobile devices. We all carry mobile devices around in our life. We know that there are issues that we have to take care of. As a retailer, that's the retailer's responsibility. It's a management issue, but it becomes a part of the life of an associate in the store. When you're doing a low Ash for a retailer, or a deployment, and let's say you don't have that system and now this is brand new to your chain, you have to take those considerations as part of your management plan. I thought that was a really good answer there. Okay. Let's jump over to best practices, Dipesh. Regarding best practice, let's take a certain aspect of it and look at it. What are some of the top challenges that retailers face in trying to implement mobile technologies? Hinduja: Sure. We see this one frequently as we help customers deploy large deployments of mobile devices into all sorts of retail settings, whether it be into grocery stores, or into home improvement warehouses or whatever it is, it's usually the same challenges that they come down to, especially for store associates. That is adoption and effective use of the technology. There's so many times when a store associate would just rather put the device away for a multitude of reasons and this is where we try and help our customers see the mobile strategy as a larger picture, so that they can ensure that the store associate is actually using the investment and being able to be the best brand ambassador for that store, for that chain, for that marquee, that it is resourceful as possibly it could be. We talk to our customers quite deeply about things like infrastructure problems that they may be seeing. Of course, we think about things like Wi-Fi and internet connections that's very common in a store. It's very critical. We also talk to them about things like, what about the power to charge the devices and keep a bank of them ready to go. If they're not ready to go, then the store associates are just going to do their job the way they always have, using pen and paper or whatever the fallback process is. It is important to have those fallback processes, but at the same time we want to be able to enable the associates to not need them. They have to be fallback, not regular. The other issue is, we always have our customers think about is, how do they handle when the device breaks and then what happens not only when the device breaks, but when the device gets replaced, how do they prevent store managers from having a stash of broken devices in the store? It's easy for a central IT or for a provider like Stratix to send out a new device, but there also has to be thought about how to get that broken device back to the central IT, to the Depot, to Stratix and then get it repaired so that it replenishes the pool as opposed to the pool constantly diminishing. That's another aspect in making sure that the devices are available and we help our customers think through a lot. The last one, this one is huge of course is, the actual experience of the associate interacting with the device. If they've got a clunky app or they got too many different apps that they have to work through, or if the ergonomics of the solution are not right, they're just not going to use. Unless that's like 100% required, they're going to put it aside and find another way to get their job done. I think ergonomics is a very big one that is overlooked often. People think, "Oh well I'm just going to let the store associate put it in their pocket and walk around all day." They don't consider that a lot of people are bigger, a lot of people are smaller and it may not work well for every store associate to have the same device in the same way. We need to be able to give them options on how they wear it. I would point out in this area, one of the emerging technologies that everybody wants to talk about is wearables. Wearables could be a great thing in this area and sometimes they can also be a problem. It's important to think about how all of that fits together so that the store associate likes the device, likes experience they're having and they could use that to effectively produce a good brand experience for the consumer. Skorupa: We have another interesting queston. Kane: The past year we talked about the devices and the fact that different store associates may want different devices. That's a great point. I think what it comes down to is, when a retailer is looking at deploying devices, you really want to understand what the use case is and which device is going to work best for the use case. Now, I'm not advocating that you give everybody multiple devices, but if with inside of a store, as you start to understand what the majority of the use cases are going to look like, that will help you understand whether a tablet might be the right solution or a handheld device or a wearable device. I think it's important to go through that because as we move forward, more and more people, more and more the associates are going to be getting these devices. Initially you may deploy them to only a select few associates, but moving forward many more people are going to get them and you have to understand, what is the best device to help them do their job in a way that you want them to do it. Hinduja: Absolutely. Tim I agree with that. There's so many different use cases to consider. One of the things that also would come up here is, how personalized do you let the store associates get? How intimately do you let them get with the mobile device? It's very easy to say it's a shared device. There's a pool of them and everybody has one when they come into work that day and they're able to use it, but a lot of times we find that, if you let it become a little bit more individualized, a little bit more personalized, then the store associate is able to get more effective with it and it becomes more personal and so they take better care of it. A lot of these discussions have to become part of that mobile strategy concept as well to get the associate to actually buy into the mobile technology. Kane: That's a great point and it makes me laugh a little bit because some associates really get intimate with the device that they love the device to the point where they will hide it and other store associates won't be able to use it. If you're in a store where you're sharing devices that there creates a problem. The other thing that it does is, if you are sharing devices and if you do have store associates that are hiding their devices, you have to find a way to monitor that because that could create some real issues. Whether you monitor it by making sure that there's a good sign in-sign out process, or whether you have some locationing that you're using to find the device if it's not in its cradle, or if you have a management style where you just have every have a manager handle a device out in the collective the device at the end of the day, which I don't advocate for that. I don't think you need to do that. But I do think you need to have some strategy as to how are we going to make sure that we're not having these devices hidden or lost. Skorupa: Great discussion on the challenges that retailers face and of course the solutions. I wanted to interrupt our flow a little bit because we have a question that I think is interesting and it's a great way in time for me to remind everyone who's listening in on the webinar, and looking at our content in the webinar to provide us with questions. We look forward to getting your feedback. As I mentioned, it will help us shape our discussion, they're the points you're looking for. This question has to do with in-store merchandising specifically. We talked about several aspects of the day-in-the-life of an associate and other aspects associated with productivity and it's inefficiency and probably mentioned a couple of relevant points. I don't think we mentioned specifically in-store merchandising efforts. For example, that might include: placement of promotional items and inventory management associated with a campaign or something like that, that's going on. Let me toss that one over to Dipesh first and see if you wanted to address how mobile devices can enhance and transform, for example, in-store merchandising. Hinduja: Oh absolutely. I think this is one of the early examples in retail mobility that has really come up and that's the use of things like tablets to do planograms and making sure that the device... sorry, not the device, the product looks as it should, and they enhanced the presentation so that the consumers are enticed to buy or whatever you want to call it. I think where this is transforming and where this is going is more in terms of the real time analytics of flow around the store and making sure that the products you want to promote are somewhere where the end users, the consumers actually will see them. With knowing about how the traffic flow goes around your store, incorporating location data through your apps or the mobile phones or the users and the Wi-Fi signals that they have and then putting your products in a... You probably can't do this mid day, but the next day, re-arranging so that the products you want to promote are front and center. Mobile technologies will help you see that in real-time and maybe even doing it mid-day as you know, you're going to get a second half of the day rush. The mobile technology has to be there so that it could quickly and easily enable the store associate to fulfill the changes required to take advantage of real time data. Real time data is great, but if you can't act on it, what's the point? Kane: Those are all great points and to add on to that, I've seen some demos recently using augmented reality on a mobile device and that's at a point now where you can start to use that to look at a shelf and understand how that shelf should look based on your planetarium information. You can also use it to help identify out of stocks and you can help the store associates basically navigate the store better so that they are going to the areas of the store that are in need of assistance. It's still a little ways off, but there are a number of pretty exciting demos out there right now that are being shown to really promote the power that augmented reality on a handheld mobile device is going to give to the store associates. Skorupa: I think it's the best time we talked about something that is absolutely critical to our discussion and that is store infrastructure. Now, mainly the benefits we're discussing today, including all of those things that we talked about as a day-in-the-life of an associate cannot be achieved if the store infrastructure will not support it or support it efficiently. If there's some latency or if things are dropped, this application connectivity is dropped, if it's just not working smoothly. How big of a problem is this to some retailers, and what can they do to solve it? Hinduja: think as I alluded to in talking about the store associate adoption and that's one of the biggest problems, one of the barriers to adoption is often the infrastructure, and the hassle it causes when they are walking around a store, and the Wi-Fi drops out on them, or the connection to the servers is just so slow that it makes it frustrating to use. A lot of times these projects, these deployments, are planned with the thought of everything going right in the store. They'll do a site map or a heat map of the Wi-Fi signal across the store, but they'll do it after hours or they'll do it before the store's filled with people or before the freezers are stocked with frozen turkeys or whatever it is, or before the freezers are even turned on sometimes and those motors are generating that electrical RF frequency. What we want our customers to do, is to think about infrastructure, not just in the ideal conditions or before it's actually in use conditions, but also in some of those irregular operations conditions, or some of the situations where you might be trying to do more than is normal. What we talk to our customers about a lot is, first off, make sure you're doing things like your heat maps when the store is actually in use and full if possible. Secondly, think about things like power. Mobile devices aren't going to eat up much power at all, but you need to have power in the right places to enable things like charging stations, and I'll get to that in a moment. Sticking with the Wi-Fi, the thing that we see a lot of people forget is OS upgrades, security patches, and even just the app updates. A normal app use on the infrastructure is probably minimal amounts of data going back and forth, very little latency. Yes, you'll get a lot of them, but it's going to be small transactions happening very frequently. Now, when you start talking about things like security, OS updates are a very big part of that, security patches are a very big part of that. You don't want to delay that because you can't get it through your pipes down to this device, whether it be iOS or Android. All of these things have security patches going down to them. These OS patches and these new OSes could be quite large. You need to be able to size, not just for the steady state, but also some of those known extremes. We've even seen one retailer recently whose app was 150 megs that they were pushing down to devices every night and it was causing a lot of failed device updates. The store associates weren't liking it because they had to hunt for which device was actually updated. Now, we've worked with them to get their act down from 150 megs to less than 50 megs, and it's about a 95% success rate on updates, and the store associates are much more apt to actually pick up the device and complete the job as opposed to just, "Oh, it didn't work. I'm going to go get the paper now." I think that's an important consideration that a lot of people overlook. Then like I was saying, power, we've seen a lot of people who have picked suboptimal, let's say, charging solutions, storage solutions for their mobile devices because they didn't have the appropriate power in place, in the right place for where they wanted store associates to be leaving the devices or using the devices in some cases. I think it's very important to consider not just Wi-Fi and internet connectivity, but also power and storage capacity. These devices, you probably want to lock them up at night, maybe not, but usually you do. You want to make sure that in a lot of cases to optimize the flow of things like iOS solicit, security patches or OS updates, you want to be able to put them into a cradle and still you don't have to take the battery out. A lot of those kinds of considerations are important, not just because of, "Well this is what we have. This is the five by five that we could fit in today, but what is it going to actually take for it to be sustainable long term?" Skorupa: That was a great point, Dipesh about your connectivity to the store. Data transfer is not just a steady state that you have to plan for, it's for updates, not only for the operating system, but for the applications themselves and changes, et cetera, et cetera for the life of the store. Once you have a working mobile device strategy in your stores, as I mentioned, there's going to be more capabilities added throughout the years and this list is not going to get shorter, it's not going to go away, it's only to get longer. It's only going to have more capabilities and more demands on the infrastructure. With that in mind, Tim, it's a good lead in to a question for you. The question is emerging technologies such as scan-and-go checkout location-based marketing. You mentioned augmented reality. Another one is personalized in-store marketing in real-time when you identify that a shopper is using them all the mobile device in your store. All of these can be important to some retail segments and certainly, that are growing. However, what's the right approach to take when balancing emerging technologies and core capabilities? How does a retailer decide, "Hey, this is not for me, this might be a magic bullet for other retailers?" I want to focus on core capabilities and how do retailers really go through a well-planned implementation and management plan that balances these emerging technologies and core capabilities? Kane: That's a really important topic because it's easy to get distracted by the technology of the day and it may not be something that is going to be so useful to your environment. It may not be the best, but one approach is, you really have to understand how you run your store and what are the things that are important to your store. Are there tasks that are being done today by your store associates that would be enhanced if you have the opportunity to give them mobile devices? I would start there as the foundational layer, and I think you'd be surprised at how many tasks there are that you can eliminate pen and paper, put it on a mobile device, and make the store associates a lot more productive. There are a lot of software companies out there that will do those basic, what I'll refer to as tasking applications. Then I think the next thing you need to look at is, how am I going to better service to my customers? Because we all know it's so easy to get online and buy something and when the customer shows up, you really want to make sure that they're treated in such a way that they want to make your store part of their daily experience. They want to come back, they feel welcomed, they're getting to the things that they need. As you go through and look at what your store does from a functional perspective, and how you treat your customers, other ways where you could introduce mobile technology into the store associates that would give them the opportunity to provide a higher level of customer service. I think that's something else that you have to do. Then the third item that I think you really want to look at from a retailer perspective is inventory. Inventory is a cost. It's expensive. It's something that you really value. The other thing about inventory is that with the e-commerce world, especially buy online pickup in-store, you're running into the environment where if somebody buys something online and it's not a bill that you store and they come to get it, they're going to be disappointed. If you're not able to give them a product that they ordered, especially online, you said that you had the order and then only to find that that you don't. You can use mobile devices for things like cycle counting, receiving, ordering, and other applications growing compliance that will help you make sure that the inventory position in your store is at its absolute best. Those are three really core technologies, and then once you get your arms around those and you start to see the benefits that you're realizing from both, then you can start to look outside and think about things like augmented reality and other technologies that might be exciting. However, it may not be the right technology to deploy first if you're looking to really build a mobile strategy. Skorupa: Yeah, it's probably not a smart idea to build out your mobile strategy on some bright shiny objects. You indicated inventory is pretty critical and the other areas you mentioned too. Inventory is critical not only because it is money as you indicated, it's actually a source of money that depreciates every single moment you possess it and it's not sold. So, it would be a critical function to have plugged into your mobile capabilities application map. I want to return and really emphasize not just the new technology side of things, but the wealth management side of a well-planned management side of the tips and guidance we're providing here in our webinar. I'm going to ask this question because I think this is so important. For retailers that don't have mobile solutions in their stores today, and I think we saw a stat up on one of our slides that that is probably about 70% of retailers today, certainly the larger retailers. What guidance can you offer them about the best way to deploy and manage - and that's critical - and manage the in-store hardware, software in ongoing support. Hinduja: For me it's very simple. It's leverage your partnerships, and leverage where the people out there that are already doing this are in scale. Whether it's about the planning, lifecycle management, the day-to-day support, or even the end of life for some of these mobile technologies, all of this is known to some extent and you don't have to be the first to break into a new territory. Leverage partnerships. There are lots of good companies out there. There's good companies out there that we should be using and making sure that as a retailer you're getting the best value you can out of that mobile technology, that mobile deployment. I'd go from there, of course, I always talk about security and privacy in your planning. Don't make that an afterthought. During deployment, make sure that you're getting your store associates excited about the technology and make sure their training is really close to when they get the technology in their hands and start using it. Nothing worse than getting trained on something and not using it for two months and forgetting what you've learned. I would say, make sure that your day-to-day support is as easy as possible for the store associates and managers. Make sure that they always have that equipment in hand and that when it's getting fixed, they're still able to be effective in the store. Right? You never want to stop the store functions just because the technology had a problem. Then I would say change happens constantly, so plan for change and always re-evaluate your mobile strategy. It's not going to be static for very long. You might have it for six months, a year if you're lucky, but it's going to constantly change. Skorupa: That's a really good point. It's not a one and done process. It has to be re-evaluated. Tim, let's give the last word to you. Kane: In addition to what Dipesh said, I think this is a great time. If you haven't deployed mobile technology to start. The reason I say that is, the technology is mature enough so that it's going to work. The other thing is, there are a number of retailers out there who have had successful deployments of mobile technology - and in those successful deployments, they’ve made a lot of mistakes that you can learn from. As Dipesh mentioned, use your partners and other people that maybe have a share group within the retail community, and you have people in that group that have already deployed mobile. Find out from them. There's a lot out there that you can learn just by going online. Another great way to learn is just go into stores where they're being used. I think the timing is good. I would suggest that, start with something relatively simple, maybe an app or two apps and get everybody up and going in those, get everybody excited about using the technology, and then expand from there. Don't be afraid to fail first. If you start something and it's not working, don't be afraid to say that it didn't work, and go do something different because with the way things are moving and the rapid changes in technology, I think we're at a point where many people are doing that and becoming much more successful. Skorupa: Well, Tim, thanks for the comment. That's going to wrap up our web conference for today. Anyone wishing to revisit this presentation, who really wants to pass it along to their colleagues that we're going to be posting it on the RIS News website. I do want to thank our outstanding panel today for the great insights into this topic, so thanks a lot for being here Dipesh. Hinduja: Well, thank you for having me, Joe. Skorupa: Tim, thank you for being here and coming back again. Kane: You're welcome and thanks for the invitation. That was a great discussion and I really appreciate being part of it. Skorupa: Thanks to all of you in the audience for joining us today. Please join us again for the next RIS web session and have a great day.

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