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Mobile technology can aid your business in lean times by increasing staff productivity, lowering inventory costs, and boosting customer loyalty.

By John Roach, Editor

As the retail industry endures recession-induced suffering, it's imperative for retailers to find alternate ways to stay profitable. That's why now, more than ever, store operations effectiveness is a prime focus for belt-tightening retailers. One cost-efficient way to improve your store operations: implement mobile workforce solutions.

"Mobile technology can help improve business efficiency and the effectiveness of your employees," IBM end-user services VP Jan Jackman said during a breakout session at NRF. The session, titled "Smarter Solutions for Retail," featured representatives from IBM, Motorola, and Workforce Management software provider Reflexis discussing the benefits of mobility in the workplace for retailers. Session participants explained how large and small retailers alike can use mobile workforce technologies to improve staff productivity, merchandise management, and customer satisfaction, all of which can have a direct impact on reducing costs and increasing sales.

The role of mobile technology in retail operations has expanded rapidly, migrating from the warehouse to the storefront, from backroom wireless barcode scanners to smartphones that enable store managers to access corporate messages and other important information from the sales floor. Less time spent behind a desk equals more time selling to customers.

For example, a mobile workforce solution combining technologies from IBM, Motorola, and Reflexis has helped a major home improvement retailer establish a uniform set of merchandising best practices across all its locations. The new system, implemented by IBM Global Technology Services, enables store employees to access corporate merchandising specifications via Reflexis applications on Motorola MC50 Enterprise Digital Assistants. (The applications run on IBM WebSphere application server and IBM DB2 data server software.) The results include: improving in-store staff productivity by 30%, redirecting 25% of man-hours toward mission-critical areas, and providing greater inventory and merchandising visibility to every stock-keeping unit.

Clearly, such mobile connectivity can be a boon for worker and store productivity. "Suddenly, an employee is now able to do three or four different things anywhere in the store and still be efficient," Harry Lerner, CEO of handheld device provider Janam Technologies, told me during a recent phone conversation.

Mobile technology can have an even more pronounced effect in small-footprint stores. "You need better customer service in a two- or three-employee store, where access to the right information while with a customer is vital," Motorola senior director of retail solutions Frank Riso said during the NRF session. Mobile technology can deliver such information directly to employees in the store, enabling them to oversee inventory management, shelf stocking, order management, and pricing control, for example.

Looking forward, the future of mobile technology will likely be in facilitating even greater interaction between store employees and consumers, thanks to increasingly potent mobile devices. "Wireless technology now enables very light, small, power-efficient devices — what's really ‘pocketable wireless,'" Janam's Lerner told me. "The big trend I see is to layer more and more applications into the devices that are already in the hands of mobile employees, so that one device can be used in many places, all within the store's four walls."

Mobile solutions clearly can benefit your store operations today — and their role will only continue to grow. Reflexis CEO Prashanth Palakurthi put it best at the NRF session, when he gestured to a slide titled "All Roads Lead to Mobility" and added, "And I don't believe we have a choice in that."

John Roach can be contacted at jroach@vertmarkets.com.