Tag: business technology solutions
The strategic significance of advanced technologies as a critical business component is recognized by enterprises like never before. Besides business modernization and cost reduction, advanced technologies allow you to compensate for labor shortages, improve brand value and competency, and expedite research and innovation processes. However, several companies jump onto the bandwagon without properly understanding the practical applications and benefits of advanced technologies. The World Economic Forum indicates that only 23% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide can invest in and grow with new digital tools. This data proves why businesses should crucially analyze advanced technologies before adopting digital tools.
To streamline things, here’s a quick rundown of five advanced technologies we believe will help you cope with the new business and economic environment.
- Simplifying Workflows With Cloud
- Low-code Applications
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Document Data Extraction
- AI Assistants
As these technologies become more affordable and handy, businesses are ardently pursuing them to automate customer service, streamline workflows, differentiate products and services, and reach new markets. Depending on your budget, implementation timeline, priorities, and unique business requirements, our team at Fingent helps you build the roadmap for technology adoption.
Read more: How to gain maximum value from your technology investments?
Let’s take a closer look at the five inevitable technologies for business transformation today:
1. Simplifying Workflows with Cloud
Workflow management is a highly overlooked enterprise strategy that directly impacts productivity. Managing different stakeholders, heaps of confidential data, and a series of preset and conditional tasks manually can lead to several errors, such as employees missing key steps, policy violations, compliance issues, and monetary losses. By taking your workflows online, cloud-based workflow management applications increase your productivity.
Cloud-powered workflows or workflow management tools:
- Are scalable, centralized, customizable to your needs, easy to integrate, secure, reliable, and hassle-free.
- Offer a seamless and unified collaboration interface by preventing users from toggling between different messaging apps or communication channels.
- Reduce your dependency on the in-house IT team by passing on the software maintenance responsibilities to the third-party software vendor.
- Can be accessed via any authorized network (with approved access credentials), on any device, from anywhere, 24/7. This has been a huge game-changer for several companies that switched to remote operations during the pandemic.
Example of a Cloud-based Workflow Tool
Finding a cloud workflow management tool that can be customized to your company’s requirements is daunting. The platform should integrate well with your organizational processes without disrupting your workflow. This is where digital workplace applications like InfinCE make the difference.
With InfinCE Digital Workplace, Fingent has improved its productivity by 20% through real-time, effective, and easy collaboration. Data-powered dashboards, dedicated servers, collaboration apps, productivity tools, virtual desktops, private mobile apps, and a host of exceptional business management features enabled us to achieve a significant operational breakthrough in streamlining workflows.
Read the full case study here.
2. Low-code Applications
Gartner estimates that by 2025, 70% of enterprise applications will use low-code or no-code technologies. Digital business transformation requires pushing custom software solutions to the market at lightning speed. This demand has given rise to low-code applications that will break the technological and organizational silos of application development, automation, integration, and governance. Low-code development enables business users to bring innovative ideas to life by dragging and dropping low-code elements through a graphical user interface.
Simply put, low-code development enables “citizen” developers or non-tech users (such as business analysts or marketers) to build dashboards and survey or contact forms faster. On the other hand, professional developers can leverage low-code techniques to perform more efficient tasks, such as legacy application modernization or back-end integrations, with improved agility and velocity.
Use Cases for Low-code Applications
- Customer engagement applications and portals
- Mission-critical applications such as ERP software, payments manager, etc.
- Data analysis applications, BI dashboards, and data management software
- Mobile apps for customer engagement
- Order processing, inventory, order fulfillment, supply chain, and accounting apps
Salesforce Lightning, Microsoft Power Apps, and Zoho Creator are some of the leading low-code applications today. SAP users can leverage the unified low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to rapidly build and extend applications and automate tasks and processes.
Read more: Low Code/No Code Development with SAP BTP: How It Is Turning the Future of Enterprise Resilience
3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic Process Automation (RPA), often called software robotics, is an easy-to-use software technology that allows anyone to automate digital tasks within their business processes. RPA allows users to create software robots or “bots” to learn, emulate, and execute rules-based business processes. According to Forrester Research, RPA software revenue is expected to reach $6.5 billion by 2025, while RPA-related services revenue could hit $16 billion in the same year.
Potential Use Cases for RPA
We offer free proof of concepts to help you understand how RPA can improve your business efficiency and customer experience. Some of our top use cases include:
- Automating discharge protocols and data management to increase HR productivity in healthcare.
- Daily retail processes automation, such as order processing, inventory and warehouse management, etc., to save time and resources.
- Reducing customer wait times through RPA-enabled chatbots that answer customer queries in real time.
- Error-free, automated billing and invoices to keep your financial systems and reports up-to-date.
- HR teams can automate personnel data and records maintenance, streamline onboarding, and seamlessly manage payroll.
4. Document Data Extraction
Extracting quality data from unstructured or poorly structured data sources and documents for further processing, migration, and storing has been the biggest obstacle in automating back-office operations. If you enter structured invoices into a robust ERP tool like SAP, your payments can be automated, and system records can be generated automatically. Due to the high costs of data extraction, several businesses extract only critical information fields, for example, the payment field within an invoice. Businesses are compelled to manually extract data from other important fields, such as validating the invoice’s compliance with VAT.
AI-integrated OCR Software for Document Extraction
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an affordable, game-changing technology that automatically extracts data from the digital images (photos) of large files, scanned documents, and sub-titles or captions superimposed on an image. It reduces the time spent in manual data entry and extraction by automatically converting typed, handwritten, or printed text into machine-readable text. AI-powered automated data extraction tools like DocuSign, Docsumo, Kofax Capture, and Amazon Textract leverage OCR technology to reduce the chaos involved in document data extraction and enable businesses to create an efficient workplace.
Our team helps customize document data extraction software that can save you time and money by eliminating transcription and transposing mistakes.
5. AI Assistants
One of the most common examples of small business automation today is using AI-powered virtual assistants. They can save your employees’ productivity by automating the most repeatable customer interactions, such as technical support, appointment scheduling, lead qualification, and order management. AI virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa can understand and act according to your voice commands and customize responses to your queries. Understanding customer intent through natural language processing and recognition allows AI assistants to maintain a human-like conversation.
Chatbots are a popular category of AI assistants designed specifically for text-based channels like SMS, email, and live chat. Recent years have witnessed a rise in chatbot adoption among several business verticals, product and service lines, websites, mobile apps, customer portals, etc. Data shows that 58% of B2B companies and 42% of B2C websites use chatbots to make their websites and mobile apps more interactive. More than 56% of businesses believe chatbots to be driving digital disruption in their industry.
Case Study: AI Virtual Assistant for HR
Fingent’s HR team was pressed to transform their service delivery model as routine, transactional tasks affected their performance and efficiency. To solve their struggle, Fingent developed MUSA, an AI-powered virtual assistant (a chatbot), and integrated it with Fingent Hub, Fingent’s internal employee management system. MUSA is short for Multi Utility Assistant. Employees can ask MUSA any queries related to HR and IT DevOps processes at Fingent, and they’ll get answered instantly. MUSA has improved our HR team’s response time by minimizing their workload and allowing them to focus on areas requiring more attention.
Business and Technology Are Inseparable!
Gartner writes that businesses with technology employ advanced tech to boost customer experience and revenue growth, clearly understand their priorities, goals, and strategies, and invest in solutions tailored to their needs. Technology allows businesses to lower the walls within and between their organizations, customers, providers, suppliers, etc. Organizations perceiving technology as a key business consideration will be able to match the pace of business change and stay relevant and competitive.
How can your business embrace growth in a new era of transformation and technology trends?
If you’re getting caught in the technology maze, take a quick break to contact us. Our consultants can simplify your technology adoption strategy based on your priorities, customer needs, financial resources, and technical requirements.
Technology is not a choice but a fundamental business strategy in the current world. Enterprises will need to accelerate their digital initiatives to support emerging technologies. To remain competitive in 2022 and beyond, businesses MUST invest in new technologies to ensure future innovation and growth. Business opportunities wait for those who successfully tackle their technology challenges. Efficiently dealing with these challenges can set a business apart from its competition.
This blog will assist you in facing the biggest technology challenges of 2022. It outlines how different technologies can help your business. And how you can ensure successful digital transformation.
How Technologies Help Businesses Achieve Success?
Digital transformation is one of the driving forces behind the growth and success of any business. It can enable better collaboration within and between organizations. Today’s business leaders must focus on projects that prepare their organizations for the future. Here are a few ways technologies help businesses stay ahead of the competition.
- Online collaboration: With a big upturn in remote working, it is fortunate that we no longer have to try to make do with cobbled-together services. Collaboration is key to efficiency and productivity. Remote workers need tools that can help them collaborate in real-time allowing them to go on with their projects rather than battling with those tools.
- Automated inventory system: The biggest benefit of an inventory system is automation. It can automate manual tasks and increase efficiency and productivity. It can also reduce overhead costs and increase customer satisfaction.
- Mobile apps: Mobile apps or customer-facing business apps improve how a business interacts with its customers.
- Digital data storage: Digital data storage has reduced common data management tasks to mere seconds. It can store or retrieve data at any time from almost anywhere.
- Project management software: This software enables project managers to assign specific tasks to their employees. Also, it enables them to monitor the workflow to see if employees can accomplish their tasks on time.
Watch more: Should your business invest in custom-built software or off-the-shelf software?
Biggest Technology Challenges Companies Face In 2022
Businesses can benefit more from emerging technologies when they successfully tackle technology challenges. Here are some of those challenges:
1. Data security
Data security threats are causing havoc in organizations. Attackers constantly develop new techniques and vulnerabilities. Some of the most significant information security challenges include:
- Surface attack vulnerabilities
- Cloud threats
- Misuse of credentials
- Digital supply chain risk
- Vertical specialized threats
- Conventional attacks
Preparedness is the key to stopping attacks before they stop you. Security leaders must look beyond traditional approaches to monitor, detect, and respond to manage a wider set of risks. In the case of supply chain risk, security leaders need to partner with other departments to prioritize digital supply chain risk. Businesses often choose to hire outsourced cybersecurity firms to help them strengthen their security and ward off any data security threats.
2. Automation
Automation has become a necessity in the digital world. Effective automation can boost productivity. It is an overall system quality enhancer in the long run. With proper automation, businesses can reduce maintenance costs. Manufacturers can also use automation to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the speed of time to market.
But, finding the right automation tools and introducing them into the business workflow can create complications. Hence, a business must prepare for all the hurdles and mitigate the risk of automation failure. The success of automation largely depends on the execution of the test strategy.
3. Remote work support or hybrid workforce
2022 is an important year for the hybrid workforce model. Integration between cloud-based solutions and mobile apps is crucial to ensure consistent hybrid or remote work engagement. The key is finding the best way to care for the needs of each user and department. Plus, an enterprise must find ways to optimize its IT support to assist remote employees with their computer problems.
4. Digital transformation
Digital transformation paves the way towards more efficiency, resiliency, and sustainability. However, implementing these technologies into business is a challenging process. These challenges are:
- Talent shortage
- Employee pushback
- Limited funds
- Challenge of agile transformation
Enterprises with limited resources can assign projects to third-party organizations. A business can reduce pushback when implementing high-code or no-code solutions based on employees’ requirements. Taking a more mindful approach to digital transformation is crucial for ensuring a smooth transition.
5. Focus on mobility
The usage of mobile apps worldwide has greatly increased in the past decade. Business owners use mobile apps to deliver services and goods to their customers. They also use these apps to boost their Return on Investment. These apps allow employers to give their employees tools that help them collaborate efficiently even when they work remotely.
However, providing a consistent mobile app experience can be challenging.
6. Integrations
There are three major integration challenges enterprises face today.
- First challenge: Enterprises may have mission-critical systems and applications that they wish to transform and modernize to future-proof their business.
- Second challenge: Connecting information from mission-critical systems to new applications. How to integrate information from point A to point B to bring everything together.
- Third challenge: Providing low code and no code tools to combat the shortage of skill and labor.
An effective IT management plan can help minimize or even cut the risk factors associated with integration.
7. AI & ML
Businesses are often pursuing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for their business problems. Another major focus of enterprises is learning how to complete specific tasks without human intervention.
Each company is different, so it takes a unique algorithm for a particular business process. Finding the right AI and ML algorithm can be challenging.
Connect With Future Technologies and Stay Ahead
There is no end to the ever-changing trends businesses must adapt to, to thrive in this highly competitive market. Hence, businesses must forge ahead to connect with future technologies, or they may find competing with other businesses in their sector harder. Whereas businesses that adapt to digital transformation are much more successful in the market. However, analyzing tech opportunities or deciding which technology best fits your business operations is not always easy. That is why Fingent top custom software development company helps companies realize tech capabilities and build, implement and adapt to the right digital tools.
It is the best time to move the digital transformation from your priority checklist to the “right now” list. Connect with our experts to know how we can help your company transform digitally!
How to gain maximum value from technology investments for your business?
The slow economy stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing organizations to identify and cut all unnecessary costs. Unfortunately, technology investments also fall prey to these budget cuts. It happens when businesses invest in technology without adequate planning.
According to a survey, 29.2% of respondents holistically examine their technology usage while searching for efficiencies. It may mean canceling or delaying new projects and purchases or reducing or canceling maintenance and support contracts for existing investments.
Research by Accenture reveals that while 47% of the companies are building their future growth strategies on mobility and technology, considering inefficient technology as one of the top hindrances to their growth. It is clear that IT-led innovation is the need of the hour, and 82% of companies are investing specifically in technology for improved growth.
Simply put, now, it is crucial to improve the return on investment of resources, optimize costs, and select the right solution when making sourcing decisions.
Read more: Navigate The Business Impact Of COVID-19 With These Hot Technologies
Here, we share a few tips to help you gain full value from your technology investments.
Ways to optimize costs
Gartner reveals that optimizing costs is essential for businesses and is one of the best ways to control spending and attain cost reduction while maximizing business value.
Optimizing costs should take into account:
- Automating and digitizing business operations
- Simplifying and standardizing applications, platforms, processes, and services
- Obtaining the best terms and pricing for business purchases
While this means ensuring that technology investments generate the maximum possible value, it also means cutting costs and considering how each technology investment drives business value.
Some technology may be expensive, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t providing value to the organization. Expensive technology may already be optimized because of the value it generates, while inexpensive technology may be unused and wasted. Therefore, it is important to make the right decisions regarding purchasing hardware, software licenses, or cloud services contracts.
Once you have identified and mitigated what you do not need and what you need, there are no more costs to reduce. It is time to look at how to optimize technology assets.
Ways to get the most out of your tech investments
Despite the cutbacks and search for savings, many organizations continue to invest in technology projects and accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. However, even with the economic slowdown coupled with pandemic-related uncertainties, organizations that have performed well during 2020 are looking to increase resilience by reducing risks and demanding shorter ROI periods on investments.
That said, the key to maximize ROI is preparation. It is essential to know that you’ve selected the right solution and are ready for implementation. Several surveys done in the past suggest that the software chosen is rarely the reason for any IT project’s failure. And a few leaders even agree with this, revealing a lack of investment in preparation, project management, and implementation. Even the simplest of IT systems require some amount of work to install and configure. So, the more complex your environment is, the more careful you will have to be.
Read more: 11 Practices Followed by Leaders to Build Resilience and Ensure Rapid Business Recovery
Key factors to consider while developing a technology strategy to improve corporate performance are:
Investment profile: Your management team must identify your IT investment percentage (allocated to build significant capabilities) versus the foundational investment. Ideally, foundational investments should not be more than 40% of the total annual investments.
Organization focus: You must identify whether a significant portion of your internal resources aims to drive innovation or growth. Also, find out if you have the proper operating processes in place to drive these investments.
Tenure: You will have to figure out if your workforce has the right experience and skills to achieve the target.
Investment economics: Move over traditional measures and instead identify newer ways to evaluate your projects and investments.
A few technologies worth investing
Following are some of the technologies worth investing in the present business scenario:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Blockchain
- Internet-of-Things (IoT)
- Cloud
- Cybersecurity
- Self-driving technology
- Streaming media
Tips for getting maximum value from technology investments
To get maximum value from your technology investments, you should:
- Be prepared with clear objectives and outcomes. You must ensure that your vision aligns with that of the new technology vendor.
- Ensure that you have people, processes, and governance for leveraging the technology when deployed, reducing the time to both value and ROI.
- Identify and assess your data sources’ quality to develop appropriate metrics for accuracy and completeness of data and check for any improvements.
- Invest in the implementation and system or process integrations to make sure they are carried out successfully. If you are using any third-party service provider for the implementation, ensure that you hire a reliable and trained team like Fingent.
- Identify users and key stakeholders and invest in their time to maintain the system.
- To reap benefits early in the project and demonstrate the value of initial investments, take a phased approach. Phasing could be by business unit, geography, or environment depending on the organizational structure and business goals. This will ensure that the project is manageable.
- Provide both initial and ongoing training in phases to allow end-users to familiarize themselves with the features and functionalities they have learned about before undergoing further training. That said, make sure the new users are also appropriately trained.
- Ensure that third-party consultants have completed their vendor training or certification programs before allowing them to use your tools. Also, check if you are using the latest version of the tool. If needed, arrange for additional training.
Read more: Fingent Speaks: What it Takes to Build a Successful Digital Transformation Strategy
Be smart with your tech investments
With technology and digital transformation becoming more pervasive across all industries, technology investment can make a huge difference in winning or losing a business. By focusing on the tips discussed in this article, companies can maximize value from their technology investments.
Technology wins only if it can appease users. A bad customer experience forces the customer to switch from vendor A to vendor B. Not only should you identify and invest in the right technology, but make an emotional connection to craft human experiences that drive customer satisfaction and differentiate you from your rivals.
Fingent top software development company helps you make a fortune out of tech investments by helping you leverage the latest technology trends. Our business technology consulting services focus on helping businesses tackle technology problems, attain business objectives, and derive value from tech and IT investments. Chat with an expert to learn more.
The world of technology is changing by the day, and placing bets on any new technology is risky. A new technology may be hyped up as the bright new hope for mankind, only to be shunned in a few years or less, as realities bite and drawbacks or stumbling blocks start to emerge out of the hype.
In such a state of affairs, it pays to invest in a time-tested technology. Mobility offers a safe bet, having withstood the test of time. Gartner estimates the demand for enterprise mobility apps to outstrip the capability of internal IT in enterprises to deliver such apps, by five times, by the end of this year. Mobile phone sales are likely to touch 2.1 billion units by 2019, further fueling the demand for mobile apps. Mobile users spend as high as 86% of their time on various apps.
The high demand for enterprise mobile apps is owing to a variety of factors that are not going to go away anytime soon.
Mobile Apps Improves Internal Efficiency and Productivity
Mobility empowers busy on-the-move executives to remain connected always, from the airport, from the client’s reception, from the dinner at the hotel, from the swimming pool, and just about anywhere else, when on the move. It enables field service executives to connect to the office in real-time, top management to remain in control of the situation during business trip, the busy executive to start working when commuting to work, the marketing executive to get details of the customer even while meeting her, and a host of other live situations. The real-time decision making, accelerated processes and such anytime connectivity triggers help businesses close more deals, and do much more with available resources.
The investment in enterprise mobile app often pays back for itself just through efficiency improvements. A case in point is the app making data collection related to customer preferences and action automatically, sparing the enterprise from the otherwise slow, tedious and resource intensive process.
Mobile Apps Deliver Unmatched Customer Convenience
Mobile apps are a rage in the customer-facing space as well, where intuitive apps enable customers to engage with the company better. Customers use their smartphones to explore a product, shop, to find a business, initiate an inquiry, and more. Mobile apps offer a one-stop point for the customer to interact with the brand. In fact, a mobile app is one basic expectation from any brand worth its product.
With a customer app, the customer virtually gets all information related to the business in the palm of their hands. It boosts engagement, allowing customers to engage with the business when whiling away time on the train, waiting for the dentist’s appointment, and at a host of similar situations. In the absence of a convenient way to initiate interaction, at such convenient time, the customer may not initiate an interaction at all.
Mobile apps cater to a larger, younger audience. About 75% of the millennial generation now own a smartphone, and it is hard to engage with them through technologies that are past their sell-by date.
Mobile Apps are the Marketer’s Dream Come True
Mobile apps facilitate on-the-go marketing, allowing new customers to find about the business easily, and existing customers to get in touch for any requirement, equally easily. A user who downloads an app is as good as a loyal customer, for the downloaded app is likely to be the first point to search for a product, and make a purchase. Regular use or even visibility of the app reinforces the brand image in their minds as well. Mobile apps may also leverage location and other personal information from the mobile devices, to tailor customized offers.
Mobile apps also make it easy for regular customers to get in touch with customer support easily, and customer support to address the needs to the customers, in an informed way.
Developing mobile apps offers spill-over benefits as well. Merely creating a mobile app gets the company access to app indexing, making it that much easier to be found in Google search results. Users get the option to download the app when they search for content related to the app.
Businesses that fail to adapt to the mobile will soon go extinct, and there is no better example of this than the fate of Kodak, Yahoo and Nokia, once household names, now no more as they failed to adapt to the mobile.
However, the mere creation of an app is not enough. Only apps developed the right way, incorporating the right features, gain traction. For instance apart from easy features to browse and shop for a product, apps that facilitate social sharing, by integrating options to make comments, likes, and also in-app messaging is likely to be well received. Likewise, while demand is high, competition is equally high, meaning customers would rarely give the app a second chance. Mess it up the first time, and the odds are the storage-space starved customer would straight away delete the app and install a competitor app, thereby losing the customer for life.
A big challenge with regards to rolling out mobile apps is the overburdened internal IT team, and the difficulty in hiring competent developers. However, at the same time, the mobile app development space is not the one for experimentation or trial and error. It pays to partner with an experienced and strategic partner like us, who have a wealth of experience in rolling out highly intuitive and well-accepted apps, cutting across niches, industries and sectors. Partnering with us allows your business to leverage the wealth of knowledge and best practices inculcated by us over time, and also gives you access to an extremely competent talented pool of professionals who are adept in rolling us highly customized and innovative apps that pass the test of high performance and usability, to perfect suit your business requirements.
Digital technologies have permeated and disrupted almost all sectors, and logistics companies are no exception.
Optimization and efficiency, combined with speed and seizing the moment are the keys to success in today’s highly competitive advantage. Technology is the key enabler allowing companies to realize these aspects.
Leveraging Technology for Strategic Planning
A report by transport and logistics analysts Oliver Wyman reveals transportation and logistics companies increasing revenue, yet having reduced profits, over a 10-year period, and come with the recommendation to “standardize and streamline structures and processes, developing industry oriented and innovative solutions, thinking and acting in terms of networks.” Technology is the key enabler in this regard.
On average, transportation companies invest about 5% of their annual revenues in digital operations, with the main focus on digitizing their customer interface. The thrust these days is especially on mobile apps and solutions, to offer a personalized experience for their customers, and track the movement of vehicles accurately. However, side-by-side companies are also increasingly using digital technology to unlock new business models, focused on the creation of value-added services and innovative solutions.
The Use of Big Data to Improve Operations
The need to cut cost and take real-time action, in a competitive environment where margins are wafer thin, require logistics companies to take greater control over their supply chain and ensure the processes take place seamlessly, at great speed. Towards such ends, logistics companies are increasingly applying Big Data technology, to capture and analyze data, to streamline their operations and optimize the supply chain.
Computers apply algorithms to crunch Big Data, unlocking insights and opportunities not possible before. Such insights enable streamlining operations and optimization of the supply chain.
- Data based automation, especially automated load building and optimizing the inbound and outbound movement of cargo, enable optimal usage of available resources, reduction of waste, and facilitate lean operations.
- Effective real-time fleet management solution facilitates “uberization” of trucks and other delivery vehicles, where empty containers may be utilized immediately by matching it to the nearest load. Mobile solutions enable greater transparency into the operations.
- A comprehensive data based inventory and supply chain management system unlocks silos, and facilitates end-to-end visibility to inventory, orders and shipments across the supply chain. Such transparency allows improved tracking of inventory movement, facilitates the reduction of network-wide inventory levels, and enable managers to respond dynamically and in real-time to any events or issues that disrupt or hinder the supply chain.
- Analytical data makes explicit greenhouse emissions and carbon footprints of truck and machinery operations, allowing companies to take steps to become carbon-neutral, thereby contributing to the cause of “Green logistics.”
- The combination of machine learning with supply chain management enables turning reams of passive data into actionable business intelligence. Logistics companies apply the wealth of data related to the movement of their goods and trucks to identify patterns related to customer trends, identify what works well, unearth market insights, and gain competitive advantage.
Digital Improves Security
Supply chain disruption is the number one global business risk for logistics companies. Technology enables fortifying the supply chain in many ways.
- Digital locks make the inventory more secure, offer a robust layer of security, in addition to physical security.
- Optimal route planning, combined with real-time tracking of cargo movement through mobile apps enable routing of cargo by avoiding congestion points and trouble spots, to minimize risks and interruption.
Internet of Things (IoT) Enhances Operations
The earliest applications of RFID and nascent IoT technology have been in asset tracking and warehouse management. For instance, rather than simply tracking inventory of pallets and crates, enterprises use sensors, beacons, RFID and other technology to gather information on the state of the connected item, such as when the “thing” requires maintenance, the expected life of the “thing,” and more.
IoT contributes to highly integrated warehouse management solutions, enabling precision movement and accurate tracking of movement of goods. The applications of IoT instruments in logistics are virtually endless, ranging from tracking transportation goods in a temperature controlled way to ensuring the correct package reaches the correct location at the specified time and more.
The trends in the immediate future include connected and ‘autonomous’ trucks, warehouse robotics, and smart warehouse solutions, all of which will improve efficiency manifold, speed up operations, and improve accuracy.
Technological Innovations Unlock New Possibilities
Logistics companies use technology not just to improve efficiency of operations, but also transform the way operations take place in itself. The use of robots in large warehouses, and to handle hazardous goods is already widespread, as is the driverless, remote-controlled vehicles.
The next big thing is the use of drones, especially for last mile delivery. The U.S. Government is already piloting a drone-based traffic monitoring system. Countries such as Spain, France, and The Czech Republic and others have several research projects looking into the use of drones for traffic management. The widespread use of drones would speed up things considerably, reduce the hassles, strain and inefficiency associated with maintaining an army of delivery boys, and also reduce costs considerably.
A start has already been made, with Amazon Prime Air already making legit deliveries using drones, in less than 30 minutes from the time customers place an order. When the technology becomes widespread, logistics will change like never before.
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Proactive transportation and logistics companies go beyond improving their operational efficiency and retaining greater control over their operations, to enhance customer satisfaction.
Technology propels a shift to a customer obsessed operating model, enabling the delivery of personalized and customer-focused logistics, with faster cycle times.
Hyper-connectivity facilitates not just big data, but also speed data. Speed and timeliness, manifesting in seizing the moment enable companies to match customer expectations and deliver competitive differentiation over its competitors.
It requires considerable expertise in both business operations and the latest cutting edge technology to roll out successful technological solutions acceptable by the rank and file. By partnering with us, you can piggy-bank on our vast and extensive experience in delivering highly intuitive apps and other solutions for transportation and logistics firms. Our rich talent pool, combined with extensive experience allow us to add value to your strategy, and roll out seamless apps that make your processes highly efficient, allowing you to cut costs, unlock new possibilities, and take customer satisfaction to new levels.
The world of business and technology is ever on the move. Businesses that do not change with the time invariably face obsolescence. Here are the top five developments small businesses can expect to impact their business, in future.
The World Will Increasingly Go Mobile
The world is increasingly going mobile. Small businesses have slowly but surely realized the tremendous potential embracing digital technologies can bring to their business, and many of them already have websites, apps, and other digital assets. Already more people access the Internet through their smartphones compared to websites, and 2024 is likely to be the year when the dominance of the mobile will become well-entrenched.
More are more customers now prefer mobile apps for browsing products conveniently on the move, quick and easy checkout, and other benefits. For the business, mobile apps offer loyalty, as customers who download an app are less likely to go elsewhere. It also allows a convenient way to reach out to customers. About 50% of small businesses will have a mobile app in coming years, and as much as 70% of their online traffic will be through this medium. Through mobile apps, 55% of the small businesses aim to increase sales, 50% of them aim to improve their customer service, and 50% of them aim to become more competitive in their niche. Even sectors where mobile apps have traditionally not found a strong footing, such as restaurants, event organizers, churches and funeral services, and others, is expected to roll out mobile apps in a big way.
E-commerce Will Get More Innovative
E-commerce is already the lifeblood of many businesses. This will continue in coming years, but competitive pressures would force several changes, all aimed at making things easier and seamless for the customer.
Newer, fully integrated and easy-to-use payment options will take center stage. Options such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and even PayPal checkout options will become common.
There will be greater integration between online and offline, with customers using apps while shopping in brick and mortar stores to make comparisons, or conversely, online customers picking up orders from physical stores. About 11% of US consumers prefer using their smartphones to make in-store purchases.
With too many e-tailers all vying for the same market, the thrust will be on innovation as the means to stand out and gain competitive advantage.
Big Data will Enter Small Business Space in a Big Way
Hitherto, the costs and efforts associated with big data meant only big businesses could leverage it for their benefit. But the times are changing. The big data will become “democratic” enough, with new solutions enabling even small and medium businesses to embrace the technology in a big way.
Small businesses would increasingly rely on the mountain of customer and historic sales data available at their disposal, before taking marketing and other decisions. 82% of marketers already opine big data as vital to their campaigns. More and more small businesses would leverage big data to personalize product offerings, explore untapped offerings, and engage with customers in a personalized way, and thereby gain competitive advantage.
The big thrust will be on the infrastructure required to collect, analysis, and formulate the required insights.
The Cloud and IoT will Drive Backend Operations
Small businesses already use a variety of popular cloud services for email, storage and application solutions. For instance, Google Apps for Work, DropBox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Office365 are already widely used collaboration tools. In fact, about 95% of small businesses already use the cloud in some form. However, businesses are still hamstrung by lack of resources and expertise to leverage cloud optimally. New solutions that hit the market in coming years are likely to resolve such issues, and also improve cloud security.
2024 is also the year when the Internet of Things (IoT) will permeate into everyday lives, and change how business is run. Small businesses will be able to leverage IoT to improve connectivity among their workforce. For instance, a smart app that integrates a wearable camera could improve connectivity among geographically dispersed employees, and also improve accountability. Connected devices could report low inventory and reorder automatically, reducing costs. The possibilities are endless.
New Paradigms will replace the Old in Marketing
Digital marketing is going through a churn. Banner ad click-through rates continue to decline, and organic reach for businesses via social media is now almost non-existent. About 49% of consumers now employ some type of ad blocking. In such a scenario, businesses are exploring newer ways to reach out to their target market.
One method likely to go centre stage in future is permissions marketing. Here, consumers give marketer the privilege, rather than the right to offer highly personal and relevant content. Needless to say, only high-quality content and authoritative content will make the cut.
Another method likely to gain big ground is influencer marketing. Word of mouth is already the driving force behind many purchases. Influencer marketing is the next stage. Influencers are persons of authority in their network. Small businesses will look to curate employees as influencers within their circle, or invest in developing external influencers.
What other trends do you foresee for small businesses? Drop in a comment.
Business leaders, often focusing on the immediate and the more pressing, relegate internal processes to the secondary. As a result, inefficiencies of various hues creep in, over time.
Inefficiencies manifest in many ways. Business processes and systems may be aligned to suit the technology rather than technology being applied to conduct business in the most seamless way. Additional processes may have come up to complete a part of the original process. Often, critical gaps in business processes and data silos make employees struggle to find the right information, or the right tools. The Boston Consulting Group estimates the amount of “procedures, vertical layers, interface structures, coordination bodies, and decision approvals” having increased by anywhere from 50 percent to 350 percent over the last fifteen years, in US and European companies, with managers spending as much as 40% of their time writing reports, and 30% to 60% of their time coordination meetings! The net result is invariably business executives having to work harder than necessary.
One knee-jerk reaction when such inefficiencies become too disruptive to be ignored is automation. However, mere automation of inefficient processes only accentuates waste. While automation is indeed a step in the right direction, businesses need to also make their processes smarter.
Here are a few ways in which business processes can be tweaked to enable working smart instead of working hard.
- Standardize processes, but one size does not always fit all. What works well in one division may not work well for the company overall. 3M found this out the hard way when they applied Six Sigma not just in accounting, but across-the-board, resulting in stifled innovation in a company where innovation is the key USP.
- Innovate. A 2011 PwC study reports 80% of CEOs believing innovation to drive efficiencies and providing a competitive advantage.
- Leverage on-demand and scalable cloud solutions such as PaaS and IaaS to optimize resources, reduce costs, create innovative products and services, and add value to existing business systems.
- Apply technology to tighten collaboration between stakeholders, including customers. Celina Insurance Group implemented a highly collaborative extranet to bring the company employees, 500+ independent agents and customers closer, and offer easy access to all relevant information, resulted in massive gains.
- Integrate the supply chain with business processes, across the value-chain, in real time, to connect people with the information they require. Diary major Danone reduced the timeline of its production optimization plans from two days to a mere 15 minutes now, by updating and integrating its production planning and scheduling technology.
- Leverage analytics to get a 360-degree view, and derive value, from available data. Apply emerging technologies to unlock data and information resident in physical and digital systems, and subject such data to analytics. Ensure such new intelligence is readily available to those in a position to use it, and actionable to make better decisions.
- Enable a mobile workforce capable of collaborating anytime from anywhere. Today’s executives and customers are always on the move. Mobile apps and workflows save time, improve efficiency, and also unlock new possibilities.
About 70% of CEOs invest in IT to reduce costs and to become more efficient, and 54% of them focus on growth initiatives powered by emerging technologies such as mobility. About 80% of manufacturing businesses expect mobile apps to increase their productivity by at least six percent. Mobile phones powered by cloud-based storage and apps allow employees to save a whopping 57 minutes a day, on average.
Smart employees are already up to the task. They often cobble up their own solutions, taking advantage of the tons of resources available online, when existing business resources do not meet their requirements. About 90% of all employees use cloud-based services, such as Skype and LinkedIn, for their work, and 79% of employees use cloud-based file sharing and collaboration tools, such as Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. Needless to say, such improvisations do not do away with all inefficiencies and come with grave security and data privacy risks.
Businesses need to facilitate smart employees by developing custom apps that automate workflows, provide digital forms, and sync offline data. A major stumbling block is the extensive time and resources that development of new custom apps requires. IT departments, already hard-pressed to keep existing systems running, often find the task of designing and updating apps that need to work with multiple platforms and disparate devices, too onerous. The solution is to partner with experienced providers, who not only make available complete and customized solutions, but also chips in with their specialized expertise and experience, to realise smart business processes.
Partnering with us allows you to have the best of both worlds – ability to roll out apps that leverage the latest cutting edge technology to enable smart business processes, without straddling your already overburdened and resource-crunched IT team with more responsibilities.
If you are thinking, “Oh compliance management. That’s the stuff that financial institutions and agencies have to deal with. It’s not for me”.
Well, you’re wrong.
If you are in business, then it’s vital for you as well. Of course, it is extremely important for those of you in the finance industry, undoubtedly. But that’s not the only industry that is prone to risks now, is it?
All businesses, big and small, regardless of what industry it belongs to, are exposed to risks. And considering the growth and advancements in technology these days, you can imagine how much the business risks have also increased. In 2016, business interruption (including supply chain interruption), and market conditions (like volatility, intensified competition and stagnation) are likely to be the top two corporate hazards. Cyber incidents are also going to be a matter of serious concern for businesses this year, not to mention the rising sophistication levels of cyber attacks. Hence, clearly it is not enough anymore, to just have a risk management strategy in place.
You need to protect your company from all possible risks like these, and that too covering all possible aspects of your business, which is best taken care of by compliance management software.
Compliance is a good thing
Yes, even though it can be a headache sometimes, it is the reason why you can have those painkillers safely and be sure that it will be effective. It the reason why you can drive those cars freely, without worrying about its safety mechanisms.
Any consumer product that you use is a result of a good number of audit and compliance procedures and a good set of regulations, standards and norms. They basically make your world a better, safer place to live in, right?
Similarly, your business needs to comply with the respective regulations and standards applicable for your kind of business. It is not just for the consumers. As long as you stick to the rules or standards, any changes taking place in the business environment, wouldn’t affect you. I’m talking about the business risks I mentioned before. Being compliant, thus makes you safer.
A good compliance management system includes the controls, functions and policies necessary to keep your business from trouble, in a cost-effective manner. It keeps up with the changes, thereby making sure you don’t fall behind.
Benefits to business
Risks are something you cannot run away from. You need to be prepared for them. This is where compliance management software will help you. Here are some benefits:
- Process standardization: It saves you the time and effort involved in keeping up with new regulations. It also helps you avoid the confusions and hassle involved in the process.
- Productivity increase: It increases the efficiency of your business, as your processes get better and more clearly defined. As it becomes a part of the culture of your organization, your employees perform tasks more efficiently.
- Improves trust factor: It helps you in building on your brand loyalty and goodwill. Customers tend to trust companies who have given a lot of value to compliance regulations and are transparent in their processes. Hence, prioritizing compliance means, prioritizing your customers.
- Builds reputation: It provides you with better chances of getting third-party contracts.
- Reliable audits: It enables easier and more accurate audits, and clarifies reporting procedures
- Efficient management systems: It enables better, more efficient management systems as well.
Put together with a proper, broad risk management program, compliance systems enable better overall risk management. They help you keep yourself updated about the new regulations and ensure that they are all complied with.
It’s the CEO’s job
If you take any aspect of your business, you will find compliance to be an integral part of it. For example, in marketing and advertising, you need to make sure that the claims you make about your product or service is true and does not violate any rules. Your marketing message should also not be an inappropriate one.
Similarly, in information security, software, health and safety, environment and even matters like employee equality, you have several compliance regulations by various authorities to keep up with. Hence, rather than implementing compliance where needed alone, you need to make it a part of your organization culture. It is indeed a difficult task and it is up to the CEO to ensure that.
We all know what non-compliance can lead to, especially since the infamous Volkswagen scandal. There were also similar instances in the past, where companies have faced serious charges for non-compliance. As your company’s CEO you need to be well aware of the consequences of non-compliance and make sure you foster a culture of regular compliance from day one. Protecting your business from risks is basically in your hands. Talk to our software compliance experts right away to find out the perfect compliance management solution for your business.
You and your business are in the midst of a spanking new industrial revolution, driven by technology that binds all living things and nonliving things, everywhere, anytime – the Internet of Things! Staying relevant and in the picture will not be as easy as before for businesses. The S7P 500 index shows how the average lifespan of companies has fallen from 61 years in 1958 to just 20 years in 2015. This is expected to fall further, making it too hard for companies to strive. Companies should be prepared for what’s ahead, conduct researches, listen to experts, keep a watch on latest analysts, reports, observe your market and trends to anticipate the changes that your business will take.
So, what technologies in the year ahead will play crucial roles in the success of your business?
Let’s see some of these:
Providing better user experience through web based platforms:
Businesses can utilize the potential of latest technologies to the maximum to offer personalized experience for customers, and to create better and meaningful relationships with them. There are several ways you can improve the customer experience through web based platforms: Developing an online customer advisory community, integrating social media intelligence, adopting face recognition methods using augmented reality in sales, etc. are a few examples. Business strategist and futurist at Altimeter, Brian Solis says, “The customer experience is a very human emotion, it is the sum of every engagement that a customer has with your business”. Researches show that 98% of customers agree that poor customer experience means going for another option.
Make sure your business has a flexible/scalable technology:
If you plan to win a marathon, would you invest in cheap trainers falling apart in the first half? Likewise, while making tech purchase decisions for your business, keep in mind the brighter side your business will get into through it. Go for tech that can evolve in pace with your business. For instance, it has always been wiser for small businesses to use cloud applications or cloud based business platforms if they aim to grow fast, in order to accommodate their growing customer demands seamlessly. New features and functionalities can be easily integrated into cloud platforms with growing business needs. The vendor can also manage the updates ensuring everything runs smoothly. There is little overhead on the business owner, who can forget the system and focus on the business goals.
Connectivity:
Offer a reliable, widespread internet connection to ensure the information you and your employees need are readily available. This allows the employees, owners and partners to have secure access on their own devices enabling tasks on the go and increasing their productivity. Onsite Wi-Fi access is critical for companies which deal with daily interaction with customers. Wi-Fi CRM also helps businesses to get details about their target audiences who uses the Wi-Fi, which in turn can be used to provide personalized experiences for customers.
Social Media Branding:
Almost all your customers use most social media sites out there. Social Media is a comfortable medium for you to reach out to your target customers instantly. Businesses can raise their brand awareness via social media among current and prospective customers. Your brand pages in Social Medias like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is a great way for you to interact with customers (via emails, updates, messages or push notifications), promote your brand, market your products and also obtain customers’ opinion about the products via feedback. It enhances the way in which your business communicates with customers, clients and suppliers by increasing responsiveness and in turn, improving the reputation of your brand.
Mobile First:
First and the foremost thing to do for your business is to have a Mobile friendly website or a Mobile App of its own, to enable business owners manage their tasks in their own mobile devices. In coming years, businesses will serve customers more through mobile apps which is why you see most online websites encouraging users to make purchase through their mobile apps. Technology giants like Apple, IBM and HP investing more in mobility is another hint of how large this market is going to get. Enterprises will create new and native apps taking advantage of the device’s unique features and form factors. Businesses will also increasingly incorporate mobile payment system into their apps offering fast, secure and easy payments online. It provides new ways of payment system for customers through chip card technology in credit cards and mobile bill payment applications.
API- first design is opening a new door to software development. In a multi-platform environment, API first principles allow to create quick and efficient products and experiences that work across any kind of device. ‘Develop an API First – Before building the website, mobile , web, or single page application and then you get to work on defining the channels you will be making the API resources available on’. All the major players in market, like Oracle, IBM, Intel and others have been preparing for the API-centric software development for years.
Security:
Whatever technology you opt for in your business, security and privacy should be its primary feature. Every app, software, hardware or platform used must be self-aware and self-protecting. You can’t compromise the company’s confidential data for a better user experience; rather everything should be an integral part of the system.
Preventive maintenance through IoT:
In critical business environments, it is important to ensure continuous uptime by diagnosing and preventing malfunctions in real time. Previously, companies used to send field technicians to perform routine checkups and preventive maintenance on fixed schedules. Recently companies started fitting equipment with sensors to alert operators when there are chances for things to go wrong. With the power of Internet Of Things and machine to machine communication, your business can analyze operational data and take predictive actions in real time. This will help your business to predict resource availabilities and take actions before problems occur. You can predict equipment malfunctions even before they occur and take preventive actions.
This year, make a wish to give your business the latest, best-in-class tech, and we are here to help you achieve that.
In conclusion, evolving your business with technology can be a game-changer for improving efficiency, reducing costs, and boosting productivity. However, it’s crucial to approach technology adoption strategically. Partnering with a custom software development company can provide businesses with the expertise needed to identify the right technology solutions that align with their goals, budget, and resources.
The retail industry is one that constantly strives to stick to margins. It’s a live or die scenario for most retail companies these days, with their managers struggling to maintain their costs low and revenues high. That’s a pretty hard thing to maintain, considering the level of competition in the industry. Every retailer is always on the lookout for ways to lure more customers into their nets while at the same time keep their costs in check. And technology has always been a means for them to achieve both these goals.
Technology spending in the global retail sector is predicted to reach $203.6 billion in 2019. Ever-changing customer expectations are forcing retailers to digitally transform their businesses. Customer experience, inventory management, supply chain management and the like are some areas where technology is being used and improvements are being made. For example, wireless technology is something that has played a huge role in transforming the retail industry, by allowing devices and people to communicate with one another from anywhere in the world. Although, its adoption has been limited by a number of factors like security concerns, deployment costs etc.
Considering the race for retail companies to bag the most number of consumers, it is almost inevitable that they make use of technology if they have to stay ahead. It is indeed important to adopt new technologies in retail business, as customers always go for maximum ease and efficiency when it comes to shopping, and if you fall short, you are just going to get phased out.
Just like customer experience and supply chain management, there are various aspects in retail where you can leverage technology to increase productivity and profits. Here we discuss few such areas, where you can make use of technology and streamline your business.
Related Read: Top Tech Trends Every Retailer Must Implement NOW
Point of Sale (POS) AND Payments
The physical location where goods are sold to customers – the point of sale – was traditionally the place where customers used to stand in line for hours to make a purchase. But studies have shown that in long lines, one out of ten customers would leave without making a purchase. Long lines may also cause resentment among customers which makes them less likely to visit the store again.
Using technology can help prevent these issues in several ways. For example, with the help of handheld computers, scanners and printers with integrated credit card readers, the point of sale can be made to be fully mobile and hence a lot faster. During times of high sales, these mobile POS terminals can be used throughout the store at several places so that customers can get their stuff billed at any of those counters quickly.
Moreover, the sales personnel with these handheld POS terminals can also process transactions while moving through checkout lines in order to accelerate the checkout process as well. For customers with lesser products, their transactions can be completed while they are still in their lines. For other customers, their products can be scanned with a barcode scanner while they are in their line and tickets can be printed with prices along with a master barcode for the entire merchandise.
On reaching the counter, only the master bar code needs to be scanned for the total price. This eliminates the need for the checkout clerk to process each item individually, thereby hastening the entire process.
Contactless Payments
Contactless payments are one of the most beneficial technological advancements in the world of payments. These help in making check out processes faster in retail stores as well. Contact payment systems are basically credit cards, debit cards, smart cards or even devices like smartphones and tablets that make use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies to make secure payments. They have an embedded chip and an antenna that allows users to simply wave their card over a reader at the POS terminal, and make their payment.
They don’t even have to sign a receipt or enter passwords or PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) as is the case with normal debit or credit card payments. This eliminates the need for customers to deal with the problems of handling cash or remembering their PINs. Also, speeds up transactions, which makes it one of the most preferred means of making payments for customers.
According to several pieces of market research, it has been found that sales volumes have increased as a result of fast transactions in a number of retail stores. A report by Chase shows that the time spent by customers at the POS is reduced by 30% to 40% and according to an American Express study, contactless transactions have been found to be 63% faster than cash and 53% faster than a traditional credit card transaction.
Hence, it is needless to say, how much of an impact contactless payments can have on improving business.
Customer Service
When it comes to customer service, one of the areas where the most number of issues arise, besides long lines in checkout is regarding the lack of store associates to direct customers or give more information about their product or store. This is where technology comes in handy. Self-help kiosks can be placed in stores, where the customers themselves can access product information, store information, inventory information (both for that particular store as well as other nearby stores in their chain), store directory (so as to locate what product is placed where) and the like.
Many retailers are already using such self-help kiosks instead of additional sales associates, which have helped them save a lot on costs. Some of these also have “get help” buttons, which alert nearby store assistants when pressed, and enable customers to talk to them through their voice-enabled Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Such kiosks allow customers to find answers to their questions on their own without having to look around for store assistants, thereby improving customer service.
E-commerce sites
Another area where technology can be leveraged to improve customer service is online shopping sites. Various improvements such as rotating and interactive product displays and other kinds of personalization are already helping retailers deliver a more delightful shopping experience online. Such personalized online experiences put together with in-store personalization provides customers with the most satisfying experience.
Augmented Reality
Some companies like IKEA, are also providing added services through their catalog, by making use of augmented reality to give customers a virtual view of products such as furniture in a living room and the like, so that they can make better decisions when choosing a product. Augmented reality is one of the best ways to improve customer experience and increase sales.
Customer Feedback
In-store feedback – one of the most effective ways to measure customer satisfaction can be made more effective with technology. Retailers can have wireless tablets and notes placed in their stores that offer easy-to-fill feedback forms for customers. Customers would always be happy to fill feedback forms if offered incentives for it, like gift coupons and discounts.
Related Read: Ways to Leverage Smart IT Solutions for your Retail Business
These are just some of the ways in which technology can be used in the retail business to improve profits. Even though a lot of these technologies are not being adopted by a number of companies due to various reasons, it is pretty clear now how important they are. As a matter of fact, with time a lot of the traditional methods in retail are sure to get phased and you will be left with no option but unfamiliar technology.
Relying on a proficient technology solutions provider like Fingent can help grow your retail business by integrating technology. Get in touch with our consultants today to map out the right technology solutions that provide your retail business a competitive edge.
Inventory Management
Management of inventory, both in-store as well in the warehouse has always been a major area of expense for retailers. Merchandise must be entered into inventory, tracked on movements and removed from inventory, on being sold. Also, real-time inventory information needs to be available in stores so as to plan the purchase of products, as and when they go out of stock. A total inventory management system that is integrated with the POS can put things in order to a large extent.
As the products are sold through the POS, they also get removed from the inventory and are updated across all systems that use such inventory information. A large clothing retailer makes use of hand-held computers or kiosks integrated with the central inventory system, which can be used to place orders to the warehouse. This is to directly deliver a product to a customer’s house because it was not available in-store when the customer asked for it.
In shipping, wireless barcode scanners can be used at the receiving place to enter stock directly into the inventory, as they get delivered, with the warehouse location of the items also being able to be tracked instantly. Many retailers are already using DEX/UCS (Direct Exchange/Uniform Communication Standard) to allow the delivery people to directly enter invoices into a store’s accounting system, thereby simplifying billing as well as accounting.
Price Auditing
Price auditing has always been a time-consuming process for retail companies. Looking up price labels on products and verifying them with the prices charged to the customers is definitely a hard thing to do. With wireless devices like a tablet or a notebook, the store associate can check the price labels of all the products by scanning the shelf labels using a barcode scanner. These devices can be linked to the store’s central database of products which are also linked to the POS terminals in order to track the prices of products being sold. If there are any differences between the POS prices and the database prices or the shelf prices, corrective action can be taken immediately. Hence, accurate pricing can be achieved and a lot of time can be saved, plus it adds to the trust factor for customers as well.
These are just some of the ways in which technology can be used in the retail business to improve profits. Even though a lot of these technologies are not being adopted by a number of companies due to various reasons, it is pretty clear now how important they are. As a matter of fact, with time a lot of the traditional methods in retail are sure to get phased and you will be left with no option but unfamiliar technology.
Here is a video of the smart malls of the Future: