Posted by Sabine Nickel on Thu, Mar 22, 2012 @ 04:03 PM
IDENTIFY. SECURE. PROTECT.
Going to ISC West? For free registration click here!
Then, stop by Zebra’s booth 13113 and learn how Zebra makes
protecting your organization and assets easier, faster and more
economical.
>> Explore a new Access Control solution with Zebra’s card printers and Jolly Tech's “Lobby Track” real-time tracking software to register and monitor guests, and for automatic check-out processes.
>> Empower your guests with UHF Gen 2 RFID identification badges, providing longer read ranges, increased reliability and sophisticated security features.
>> Get a demo of our complete QuikCard ID Solution Kit, including CardStudio™ Software, to easily create professional photo IDs.
>> Check out our personnel visibility and real-time location solutions to assure a safe workplace by monitoring unauthorized access or other emergency situations like “man down” and “mustering and evacuation”.
>> See how you can manage devices, create templates and scale printer performances with Zebra’s New Print Management Software.
>> Learn more about our Genuine Zebra® Supplies, especially our new eco-friendly cards and ribbons, providing outstanding cost-effectiveness and security.
For more information, check out www.zebra.com.
Posted by Krista O'Brien on Wed, Mar 07, 2012 @ 09:13 AM
Empowered Customers. Increased Efficiency.
For free registration to Customer Engagement Technology World (CETW) in San Francisco March 28-29, go to http://cetworld.com/register.asp, and enter VIP Code CEX53 during Step 1 of the registration process.
Then, visit Zebra booth #524 to learn how Zebra's reliable kiosk printers—in concert with its partners’ innovative kiosk technologies and integration expertise—help reduce operating costs, raise productivity, and improve the customer experience.
Featured at Zebra booth #524, the cost-effective KR203 offers the best value in its class, providing high print quality, unmatched reliability, and many maintenance-reducing features available only on more expensive printers. For a sneak peek, view this 2-minute video.
From wayfinding and self-check-in … to ticket printing and employee self-service … to deli preorders and gift registries, a variety of industries benefit. To learn more, visit Zebra at booth #524.
Posted by Jan Nash on Tue, Nov 15, 2011 @ 07:31 AM
Mobile printing is an excellent enhancement to markdown and other price labeling operations. Mobile printing helps streamline retail operations, freeing up store associates to spend more time with customers and improve sales. The labor savings alone deliver strong ROI, as we discussed in a previous blog post, and the value is even greater when taking into account improvements to responsiveness and software effectiveness.
To maximize the value of mobile printing and the incremental improvements it provides to markdown management software, retailers should implement mobile printers that:
• Easily integrate with the pricing system so printing is a one-step process
• Are ergonomic and convenient for workers to use and load
• Support enterprise wireless networking and security standards
• Contain flexibility for multiple in-aisle printing needs.
The retail and merchandising pages in the Industry Solutions section of Zebra’s Web site contain related case studies, application information, and other resources, including an ROI calculator to help find the value of mobile printing applications in specific operations.
To learn more about mobile re-pricing, download the white paper Retail Re-pricing: Mobile Printing Enables Fast, Efficient Price Changes.
Posted by Jan Nash on Wed, Nov 02, 2011 @ 09:13 AM
Printing new price labels with real-time mobile printers closes the loop between pricing strategy and execution. And, in fact, mobile printing is the most efficient and accurate technique for managing variable pricing, re-labeling and markdowns.
The return on investment for supporting pricing operations with wireless mobile printing comes from reduced labor time needed to re-label goods with markdown prices. Time savings range from 25 percent to 40 percent* among those retailers that have converted to an in-aisle printing application.
Integrated, in-aisle printing also gives retailers the pricing accuracy and other benefits associated with mobile printing, further improving the effectiveness of their markdowns and promotions. For example, printing a bar code on the new label means that store associates can process clearance or marked-down products quickly at the POS and make accurate stock adjustments. Simultaneously, the system information stays current because the reduced price products have different codes in the system from the regularly priced products.
How Mobile Re-pricing Works
Mobile printing in store aisles is a well-proven practice to improve efficiency, eliminate latency, and reduce labor requirements. In most applications, associates use a mobile printer with a handheld or cart-mounted computer to prepare markdown labels, audit shelf prices, and create new product or shelf labels. The printer and computer take advantage of the existing in-store wireless local area network (LAN) connection to the store computer system to get up-to-date price information and to verify that the price marked on the shelf matches the price charged at the POS. If there is a discrepancy, associates can print and apply the new labels on the spot. These applications protect retailers against pricing errors and help comply with price accuracy laws that many states and countries have enacted. The process also helps catch missed markdown items, aligning store execution with pricing strategy.
Cases in Point
- A Russian apparel store changed from having its retail store assistants print price markdown labels in the back office to printing them on demand on the shop floor with mobile printers. Improved re-pricing accuracy freed up employees to focus on their customers. As a result, Topshop realized a lift in sales margins and profits, improved customer service, and accelerated payment processing for its customers.
- A toy retailer in Greece automated and decentralized its price labeling process, enabling associates to produce price, promotional, and markdown labels while in the aisle. It reported that associates were 80 percent more productive and saved between 45 and 90 minutes per day by avoiding walking back and forth to the central office. The new process also reduced pricing errors rates by 80 percent.
- A major supermarket chain saved labor costs by re-focusing a 20-person, six-hour night shift after changing processes that included switching to wireless mobile printers to create new shelf labels and conduct price audits. Now, a smaller team completes the same work in just one hour before the store opens using Zebra mobile label printers.
Have your operations benefited from using mobile re-pricing technologies? How so?
Learn more about mobile re-pricing in the white paper Retail Re-pricing: Mobile Printing Enables Fast, Efficient Price Changes.
Visit Zebra’s Merchandising page for other resources, including a retail mobile labeling ROI calculator.
*According to customers of SofTechnics, a leading provider of retail pricing and inventory management software
Posted by Sabine Nickel on Thu, Oct 27, 2011 @ 10:12 AM
Assure the 5 Rights of Medication Administration
When it comes to healthcare, today’s highly informed patients have choices. And their biggest decision point is often based on trust that the provider will deliver the best quality of care, safely and efficiently. Over the past two decades, bar code technologies have helped to streamline bedside care and reduce medication errors, while reducing paperwork and administrative workload.
Thibodaux Regional Medical Center On Board for Quality Care
Medical centers across the nation are leveraging the benefits that bar coding provide beyond just reduction of paperwork. Consider Thibodaux Regional Medical Center, a 185-bed acute care facility, provides inpatient and outpatient care in Thibodaux, LA. For the third consecutive year, J.D. Power and Associates recognized the center for service excellence under the Distinguished Hospital Program, acknowledging Thibodaux Regional’s strong commitment to provide “An Outstanding Patient Experience” for inpatient and outpatient services.
Barcodes to improve BMV
To improve quality and safety even further, Thibodaux saw bar codes as a solution to improve bedside medication verification (BMV). The medical center sought to replace paper bar code labels with a durable, easy-to-scan solution. In addition, staff needed a way to help prevent nurse workarounds in BMV. In particular, they wanted to prevent nurses from scanning bar codes from patient folders instead of patient wristbands—a requirement for achieving BMV compliance.
Prior to implementing a BMV solution, Thibodaux conducted extensive research to uncover workarounds that nurses use in other medical centers. Thibodaux discovered that by including a “check-digit” in the 2-D bar codes on patient wristbands, they could guarantee that only approved patient ID scanners can read the wristband. This prevents chart label scanners, or other off-the-shelf scanners from decoding the wristband data. In addition, the check-digit ensures that medical staff actually scans the band at the patient’s bedside, and is a major factor for preventing workarounds.
Thibodaux certainly understands that patient trust is vital—and their decision to implement BMV proves it. “Before we went live, we knew about potential workarounds and put a plan in place—a checkpoint between the nurse and patient that protects patient safety,” said Danna Caillouet, physician analyst, R.N. “That was a huge win for us.”
To gain the most value from bar coding solutions, medical centers must ensure that wristbands contain the right information, meet industry mandates, and provide staff with an efficient solution that also prevents workarounds.
To learn more about bar coding at the point of care, check out www.zebra.com/healthcare.
Posted by Jan Nash on Thu, Oct 20, 2011 @ 07:59 AM
Re-pricing products in the store has evolved from simply being a reaction to purchasing mistakes, to a strategic tool that retailers apply to increase traffic and sales, as we discussed in this earlier article. Following are some common re-pricing strategies, followed by some thoughts on how to execute them.
4 Common Re-Pricing Strategies
1. Everyday Low Price
The everyday low price concept turns markdown into an obsession, based on the theory that people return to the place where they get the best price. It demands a minute-by-minute attention to the most aggressive price competitiveness, and focuses on in-store execution, which is all about labeling and re-labeling.
2. End-of-Season and Special Event Sales
End-of-season sales and sales for special events represent a very significant proportion of annual sales. The ability to reduce or increase the price in the store is a powerful tool, but doing so with a label gun or a red pen, as some specialty retailers may still do, does not assure accuracy, timeliness or cost- and labor-efficiency.
3. Regional Pricing
After analyzing buyer behavior, a store chain’s headquarters will increase a product’s price in certain regions or zones to increase margins without affecting sales volumes, or decrease the price to achieve volume targets, though at a lower margin. Successfully carrying out variable pricing at the store level depends on efficient re-labeling techniques as goods arrive from the distribution center.
4. Price Optimization
Price optimization software applications can accurately specify the right item, right price, and right time to mark down an item, and even account for geographic or demographic differences within individual stores. However, they cannot ensure that the store will actually perform the markdown in time.
Learn more about markdowns here.
Execute Pricing Strategy Most Efficiently with Wireless Mobile Technologies
Using inefficient processes for managing variable pricing, re-labeling and markdowns puts stores at risk for lost sales, sluggish inventory turnover, and inefficient labor practices. For example, one Zebra retail customer calculated it had lost 20 percent of the potential profits from each promotion it ran because of the extra labor cost required to prepare for the sale.
- However, when pricing systems alert store managers of new pricing recommendations on their wireless PDAs and desktop PCs, the managers can then approve the new pricing in real time to trigger new price labeling jobs to store associates in the aisles. Store associates carrying mobile printers can print the price change labels at the point of need.
- Likewise, to perform re-labeling at receiving, employees can scan in bar coded goods as they arrive at the store. The system identifies those items that need re-pricing, enabling associates to print out new price tickets on demand via a mobile wireless label printer.
Do you see a way mobile labeling technology could make your price changes faster and more efficient?
To discover how apparel stores, supermarkets and others have raised re-pricing accuracy and employee productivity with mobile printing, download this white paper.
Posted by Jan Nash on Mon, Oct 10, 2011 @ 06:17 AM
Library of Resources Points the Way to More Efficient DSD Operations
Automating direct store delivery (DSD) and route accounting and DSD operations improves business efficiencies, and the benefits and ROI can grow substantially by leveraging mobile computing, printing, and wireless communications.
For example, increase route efficiencies by printing on the road, in the truck, or at your customer’s location with mobile printers. Route sales representatives equipped with mobile printers can verify and print invoices on-site and cut days out of your billing cycle. Upload/download route, instruction or customer files remotely and securely, without requiring docking cradles, through wireless connectivity at your distribution centers.
Learn how to run more accurate, efficient and profitable operations with this collection of DSD information resources from Zebra:
Video
See how easy it can be to drive efficiency in your route with this new Direct Store Delivery video.
Mobile Workforce ROI Calculator
Calculate your potential savings after moving from a fixed printer configuration to a mobile printer solution. Click here.
Case Studies
Mobile Printers and Handhelds Hasten Delivery of Daily Bread: Learn more and view the Puritan Bakery video case study here.
Durable Mobile Printers Streamline Beer Distribution: Discover more about the efficiencies mobile printing delivers to DSD, plus read the Schenck beer distributor case study, here.
White Papers
“How Mobile Thermal Printers Cut Forms Cost Down to Size”
Learn how organizations can cut their printer supply costs by more than half for direct store delivery (DSD), field service and other mobile operations with modern thermal printers that also provide print quality, reliability and productivity advantages.
“Improve Route Accounting and DSD Cost-Effectiveness with Mobility Technology”
Automating route accounting and DSD operations provides proven value to businesses by enabling processes that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase revenues. Basic automated order entry, delivery confirmation, and invoicing provide significant business value and professionalism. The benefits and ROI can grow substantially by leveraging mobile computing, printing, and wireless communications capabilities to automate additional activities.
“Leveraging Mobile Printers to Streamline Route Accounting and DSD Operations”
Automating route activity provides benefits in the field and the office by reducing the labor and time needed to enter data and process paperwork. Mobile printing is an essential element for delivering these benefits in DSD operations. This paper shows how route staff can use mobile printing to make more deliveries while improving the accuracy of each transaction.
Are you investigating how you can further cut costs, raise efficiency and improve data/transaction accuracy? Did you find these resources helpful? What else would you like to know?
Posted by Jan Nash on Thu, Oct 06, 2011 @ 07:35 AM
Re-pricing products in the store has evolved from simply being a reaction to purchasing mistakes, to a strategic tool that retailers apply to increase traffic and sales. Price changes are often required for regional pricing or other variable pricing strategies, promotional markdowns, clearance, seasonal sales, or product mix changes.
Retail headquarters usually sets overall pricing, but where it really counts is in the store. For price changes to be effective, store operations must change to keep pace with changing marketing strategies. Delays and errors in implementing price markdown strategies needlessly cost retailers millions in missed sales and increased labor costs. Delays in coordinating markdown prices on the shelf and at the point-of-sale (POS) also put retailers at risk for violating shelf pricing laws and checkout fraud.
Printing new price labels with real-time mobile printers closes the loop between pricing strategy and execution. Mobile printing is an essential tool for efficient price labeling management, and a proven practice to reduce labor costs and improve accuracy for markdowns and a variety of other retail printing applications.
According to SofTechnics, a leading provider of retail pricing and inventory management software, stores typically reduce their price marking costs between 25 and 40 percent by integrating price management software with mobile computing and printing operations.
Discover more about re-pricing techniques in the Merchandising section of Zebra’s website, including an ROI calculator to help find the value of mobile printing for your operation.Read more about how retailers are profiting from mobile price labeling in this white paper.
Posted by Sabine Nickel on Wed, Oct 05, 2011 @ 01:42 PM
American Barcode & RFID has recently created a series of solutions revolving around coupon printing on demand using the Zebra Kiosk Print Station and Zebra’s KR203 kiosk printer.
Customers can easily navigate through the self service application to look for their favorite beverages, coupons and recipes—and print them right away, on-demand.
Take a look at this short video clip to see how it works:
American Barcode & RFID with Zebra's Kiosk Print Station
Posted by Jan Nash on Fri, Sep 30, 2011 @ 11:19 AM
We've been talking about major retailers running pilots of radio frequency identification item-level tagging over the last couple of years. At last, Macy's has announced that it will equip all its Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores with RFID technology to improve inventory tracking. Read more in this RFID Journal article.
Why will many retailers likely be close behind with their own rollouts? Discover more about this trend and its benefits for retailers in our recent blog post.
Also learn more about the value of item-level tagging in retail in the white paper, Traceability in Retail—Reducing RFID Media Costs for Best Value, and see the broad span of uses and benefits of RFID in this informational RFID capabilities brochure.
And see firsthand how RFID can streamline the retail supply chain from manufacturer to distribution center to store: Check out this video of the apparel tagging demonstration at RFID Journal LIVE! 2011.
Are you planning to bring item-level RFID into your stores? What benefits would you expect to gain?