Achieve supply chain visibility in retail with the right technology
The importance of supply chain visibility
The retail environment has changed massively in the past 5 to 10 years, with customers demanding real-time information on stock availability in the store, warehouse and even online. This puts enormous pressure on retailers to ensure they have implemented the right solutions and technologies that will allow them to gather stock information more accurately. Studies done in 2013 by the Aberdeen Group supports this growing pressure as it indicated that supply chain visibility was the top business pressure for retailers.
Our work with Woodies DIY
Since 2003 Woodies had used handheld terminals called Piccolinks to conduct on the floor stock taking and labelling of goods. As the years went on Woodies were finding it difficult to have the Piccolink terminal repaired, as the devices had been discontinued and support was going to run out.
This left Woodies having to look for other alternatives as they wanted to replace the hardware but keep their existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system as replacing the software would have been a time-consuming and costly project.
We came to Woodies with the solution, which was to use software emulation, which meant that Woodies could update the handheld terminal without having to update the software. With this, we were able to put the emulation software onto the MC3200 handheld computer. Which allowed us to help Woodie’s bridge the gap between the old and the new technology.
To read more about this project, view our Woodies DIY case study.
