Transforming Retail Fulfillment with Scandit’s Innovative Solutions

Retail fulfillment is the process of receiving an order from a customer, processing it, and then delivering or arranging pickup of the order to the customer.

A critical part of any retail business, those who excel at fulfilling customer orders and completing delivery or administering pickup in a timely and accurate manner are likely to experience higher levels of customer satisfaction and see a boost to the bottom line.

Things have changed for retailers looking to boost their order fulfillment efforts.

A new and unique offering from Scandit is giving retailers the ability to cut their costs and improve fulfillment rates – without expensive changes to infrastructure or processes.

Order fulfillment is a tough game to be in. Razor-thin margins and slow and labor-intensive processes mean making money from online orders, especially for e-grocery, is a tough task.

But despite this, fulfilling online orders is still a crucial part of omnichannel retail and a way for retailers to grab a piece of the loyalty pie.

Optimizing fulfillment efforts is high on the agenda for retail execs.

But where do retailers look? Where can they optimize?

The good news is we’ve looked for them. Through working with some of the leading retailers across the globe, we uncovered their pain points and invested a lot of time and resources into finding ways to solve them.

And even better, we have pinpointed precisely where the biggest time savings can be made and headaches removed – and come up with a solution.

What is retail order fulfillment?

Retail fulfillment, or the process of receiving and processing orders and then subsequently getting them to customers, consists of three overarching steps: order picking, order assembly, and then delivery or pickup. Each step is equally important to the overall process, which also includes receiving, warehousing, packing, shipping, and returns processing.

1. The first step is order picking, or when a product or products are retrieved from their inventory locations. Speed and accuracy are key in this step, especially during high periods of demand.
2. Next is order assembly, which involves product assembly and the supportive processes that make up this step.
3. Finally, there’s delivery or pickup. The final stage of the fulfillment process, it’s essential that the assembled product is shipped to or picked up by the right customer.

A good retail fulfillment process can help move products and manage customer orders with greater efficiency, helping improve customer satisfaction and maximize profit margins.

Think of it like this: It’s the fulfillment process that helps to define the overall customer experience. When a customer receives their order promptly and without issues, they’re much more likely to have a favorable view of your brand or product compared to the alternative.

The challenges of traditional retail fulfillment

Conventional retail fulfillment isn’t without its challenges – and such challenges can result in inefficiencies that bog down the process and incur high operational expenses that eat into profit margins. For instance, conventional picking and packing is often completed manually, which can be prone to errors and lead to incorrect shipments and customer dissatisfaction.

High operational costs

High operational costs are a common pain point of conventional order fulfillment considering the commitment to labor, the fulfillment infrastructure and technology that many businesses must commit to the process. These costs can eat into profit margins, especially if they don’t work to overcome any inefficiencies in the fulfillment process.

Inefficient picking and packing processes

Conventional picking and packing processes are often done manually, which can bog down processes and slow fulfillment, which can have an impact on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Additionally, manual picking and packing have higher error rates and can result in more product returns and customer dissatisfaction.

Poor customer experience

Often a direct result of inefficient fulfillment, a poor customer experience isn’t going to create brand loyalty. A poor customer experience is likely to result in customers shopping with your competitors the next time they’re in the market for the same type of product. Customers today want their products delivered quickly and correctly. Any exception to this new norm is likely to impact your business and your bottom line.

Limited scalability

Conventional retail operations aren’t designed to be flexible and scalable, which can pose major issues during peak periods of demand. Scaling up often means retail centers need increased inventory and better processes to meet any uptick in customer demands. Most conventional centers aren’t designed to level up to meet such challenges, which can stretch resources and bog down fulfillment times.

Inventory management issues

To fulfill orders, there must be the right balance of inventory at all times. Overstocking and understocking are both detrimental in their own way, underscoring the need for accurate inventory management.

The combined cost of over and understocks to retailers is known as inventory distortion and here’s a useful guide on achieving the best product inventory balance.

For instance, in cases of overstocking, you’re incurring additional costs to store and manage products. Conversely, understocking may result in out-of-stock items and the inability to fulfill orders.

Compliance and regulatory challenges

Retailers also have to account for compliance and regulatory requirements, which may include products that are age-restricted or must comply with various laws or standards. Failure to comply with such requirements could result in fines, loss of revenue, confiscation of licenses to sell certain goods and reputational harm.

Labor shortages and high turnover rates

Conventional retailers rely heavily on manual labor – and manual labor is getting harder to come by. High turnover is common in fulfillment centers, as jobs are physically demanding – making it hard to attract and retain talent.

Lack of real-time data and insights

The best retailers are those that can make data-based decisions and also operate with transparency in real-time. However, conventional centers often lack order visibility and data tracking ability, . By allowing the customer to see the status of their orders, you’re also helping to enhance their overall experience. At the same time, the ability to track your center’s fulfillment data can also help you address inefficiencies to improve profit margins.

Scandit’s innovative retail in-store fulfillment solutions

Through new and improved advanced capabilities, Scandit is bringing cost-effective scalability to existing order fulfillment processes and eliminating many of the pain points in conventional fulfillment setups.

Solutions such as MatrixScan Find and SparkScan both help streamline different parts of the fulfillment process. MatrixScan Find, for instance, is an augmented reality solution designed to enable users to scan multiple items at once to help them identify the right product, parcel or pallet in seconds. SparkScan is a barcode scanner that can further help automate shelf management and order fulfillment.

Both solutions help boost productivity and efficiency across the entire operation – from picking to pickup.

Built with the worker in mind, these new capabilities represent a unique offering that brings significant benefits to retailers. With pre-built and intuitive smartphone user interfaces and easy integration into existing apps, worker onboarding is fast so retailers can start now.

Below, we break down exactly how these new capabilities accelerate existing processes and deliver results for retailers.

1. Streamlining the retail order picking process

We’ve all experienced it. Spending ages trying to find the right spice in the cupboard or getting frustrated as you look for a piece of paper in the stack on your desk.

It’s the same for picking items for an online order. Huge amounts of time are spent trying to find certain items. Among a sea of similar-looking bottles, jars, boxes and packets, order pickers are under pressure to find the right item, fast.

It’s estimated that the cost of in-store picking can account for approximately 8% of the total order value. So any savings here significantly impact profitability.

How about cutting the time spent looking for items on a shelf in half and reducing picking errors? The recently launched MatrixScan Find allows pickers to scan shelf-edge labels and instantly highlight the right product for picking using augmented reality (AR).

Not only does it help pickers find the right item, it prevents them from picking the wrong one too. Visual, haptic and audio feedback add a layer of security, even when labels and products don’t match, to ensure the customer gets what they want.

Once the right items are found, they need to be scanned and placed in the correct bins. Faced with scanning thousands of items during their shift, the ergonomic, high performance and adaptive scanning from SparkScan supports workers and reduces the mental and physical burden on pickers.

Workers can scan successive items, one-handed and at any angle with minimal physical effort. We obsessed over the user experience so our customers don’t have to.

SparkScan combines seamlessly with MatrixScan Find and both come with a pre-built intuitive user interface. Saving time for both IT teams and operations teams as integration with existing store applications can be done with just a few lines of code and rollout can take place in a few days.

2. Enhancing order assembly and staging area efficiency

With picking time and effort saved and the customer ready to collect, the order must be assembled.

It’s at this point in the process that the ‘finding the right items quickly’ headache re-appears. Most grocery orders contain multiple items stored in different locations. Finding all the correct elements in the staging area is a slow process. Scanning or visually inspecting labels one by one.

And with the customer waiting, the clock is ticking.

The same multiple barcode scanning and AR assistance that MatrixScan Find offers pickers are just as valuable here. The pre-built augmented reality interface allows users to scan items, totes or bins, immediately identifying the correct one to be picked based on pre-set search criteria. It’s especially helpful for users who need to find one product or part among many, allowing for fast, efficient picking.

The ability to instantly see which items are needed is a huge time saver for the worker. And haptic feedback from the device helps with clarity in a noisy environment. Ensuring a speedy service and satisfying customers as they roll in and out of the collection area.

3. Improving in-store and curbside pickup

For orders that contain age-restricted goods or that require proof of ID, we have another new shiny toy to assist workers.

When ID checks are needed, the workers responsible for handing over goods are often left to perform this check manually. At this point in the process, they are in a rush too. Trying to hand over orders quickly to avoid disgruntled customers.

Visually inspecting an ID doesn’t record an accurate date or run an official check to see if the ID is fake. And there’s little to no proof of compliance with regulations for age-restricted goods.

Our ID scanning software solves all these problems by scanning and checking IDs to verify them in one second. Securing an audit trail and removing the burden from workers and the possibility of human error when reading dates of birth that puts compliance at risk. Scandit’s ID scanning software not only completes its scans within one second, it does so with 100 percent accuracy, ensuring the end user receives their goods quickly and also ensuring that you’re complying with any laws or regulations. It works with drivers’ licenses, visa stickers, passports and military IDs.

For some regions, IDs can be checked for authenticity. With grocers often lacking in-store connectivity, all processing occurs on the device, reducing fraud exposure without requiring internet access.

Losing a license to sell specific goods like alcohol has an enormous impact on a retailer’s revenue. Not just from those items but also from customers looking to aggregate their purchases and get everything done in one shopping trip who go elsewhere.

4. Conducting efficient staging area audits

With multiple orders coming and going at all times of the day, the staging area can become busy and confusing. Keeping it tidy reduces worker stress and boosts productivity.

When orders get canceled or expire, it’s imperative that workers can see at a glance the status of orders and what can go back on the shelves, especially when perishable items are included.

However, manually auditing the staging area is time-consuming. Checking all the order labels and scanning at regular intervals slows replenishment efforts. This has a knock-on effect for other tasks on the worker’s to-do list.

Our MatrixScan AR capability gives workers immediate insight into order status. It provides a real-time overview using easy-to-read traffic light visuals so workers can quickly determine what needs to happen with each order.

Real-world success stories

Scandit solutions have been utilized by several leading brands and their fulfillment centers to streamline processes and improve customer satisfaction.

At Forum Sport, Scandit’s Barcode scanner has improved inventory management, helping save time on the shop floor and allowing employees to spend more time focusing on other aspects of growing the business.

EK Retail has enabled Scandit’s Smart Data Capture solutions, including MatrixScan AR to triple the speed, efficiency and accuracy of product re-orderings.

We save a lot of time and a lot of work since implementing Scandit’s super fast barcode scanning technology. What was once a manual ordering process is digital through the app.

Yannick Rodermund, Team Coordinator, Software Development at EK Retail

These are just two of many real-world examples that have taken full advantage of Scandit’s industry-leading solutions to enhance their processes.

→ Discover all retail case studies

Summary

Our capabilities have the potential to transform the in-store order fulfillment process. Solving worker headaches and speeding up tasks that deliver big benefits for retailers. Improving each part of the process has a compounding effect that boosts the overall efficiency of order fulfillment operations.

Fulfilling more orders with the same amount of resources lowers costs and scales the operation in the direction of the holy grail – profitability.

With just a few lines of code, these capabilities are easily integrated into existing applications. And pre-built user interfaces based on months of research and testing are a valuable solution for retailers that wish to avoid the burdensome task of building a tool from scratch.

It’s a ready-to-go, unique solution to bring fulfillment rates up, and costs down.

Retail fulfillment FAQs

How does Scandit’s MatrixScan Find technology enhance order picking?

MatrixScan Find technology includes a pre-built augmented reality interface that allows users to scan products or parcels, immediately identifying the correct one to be picked based on pre-set search criteria. It’s especially helpful for users who need to find one product or part among many, allowing for fast, efficient picking.

What makes Scandit’s SparkScan unique in the order fulfillment process?

SparkScan is a barcode scanner that can further help automate shelf management and order fulfillment. SparkScan supports workers and reduces the mental and physical burden on pickers by permitting the scanning of successive items, one-handed and at any angle with minimal physical effort.

How does Scandit’s ID scanning software benefit in-store and curbside pickup?

Scandit’s ID Scanning solution scans and checks IDs to verify them in one second, securing an audit trail and removing the burden from workers and the possibility of human error. Scandit’s ID scanning software works at 100 percent accuracy and works with drivers’ licenses, visa stickers, passports and military IDs.

How do Scandit’s solutions integrate with existing retail systems?

Scandit’s solutions are designed to make any existing retail infrastructure smarter, more streamlined and more accurate.

What are the benefits of using Scandit’s retail fulfillment solutions?

Scandit’s retail fulfillment solutions are purpose-built to resolve many of the pain points associated with conventional retail fulfillment. They’re designed to enhance efficiency, improve customer satisfaction and maximize profit margins. In addition, Scandit’s solutions are designed to be scalable to meet any increase in demand.