Unlocking the Power of Associates at Staples Canada

Founded in 1991, Staples Canada is a privately held company based in Richmond Hill, Ontario. With 298 stores across Canada, it serves Canadian businesses, teachers, parents, students, and millions of consumers annually.

After three decades in business, Staples Canada embraced the changing nature of entrepreneurship, creativity, working, and learning with a more focused balance between business and retail customers.

It expanded its product offerings and services and integrated digital experiences to take what they do for customers to another level.

The transformation involved updating outdated technology and processes, and Staples Canada needed to find a way to empower its associates and unlock their full potential across daily tasks.

The key was smart devices and a new employee application powered by Scandit Smart Data Capture.

The new Scandit-powered app is going to completely change how our store operates and how an associate goes about their daily tasks.

Lance Martel, CIO, Staples Canada

Challenge

Staples Canada’s transition to ‘The Working and Learning Company’ involved more than a brand facelift. It involved:

• Transforming stores and adding coworking and community spaces
• Replatforming their e-commerce operations
• Offering new in-store and digital services
• Investing in new engineering capabilities

For this digital transformation to be successful, Staples Canada knew the crucial role of store associates. In addition to traditional inventory management and customer service tasks, they needed to be trained on new products, understand how to upsell warranties and other services and fulfill online orders.

Staples quickly recognized that their current associate devices were not fit for purpose.

The dedicated scanners were expensive to maintain and not always available to associates due to their limited number. Tasks involving the devices were physically demanding, and they provided limited sales assistance. Overall, they didn’t act as an enabler for the tasks associates were being asked to perform.

For example, the aging hardware made it difficult for store associates to audit prices accurately. Resulting in poor customer experience, price overrides, and extra work at cash.

“We wanted to figure out a way to really unlock the power of the associates by giving them a better set of tools to do their daily tasks,” explains Lance Martel, CIO, Staples Canada.

Solution

Staples Canada decided to replace legacy scanning devices with iPhones and create an app that provided associates with all the tools to do their jobs.

Crucial to the project’s success was the ease with which associates could capture and access accurate data when using the new app.

Staples Canada partnered with Scandit on an initial proof of concept to aid store associates in several data capture workflows, including inventory management, product information lookup, and price auditing.

The IT team also spent time surveying the market to identify other data capture solutions, as they felt this was a common problem for retailers.

However, they soon found it difficult to find an alternative solution to the breadth of capability and adaptability offered by Scandit Smart Data Capture.

“We quickly pivoted back to say, look, this is something we want to partner with Scandit on to make sure we build something that’s specific for our associates and solves our business needs,” Martel says.

Staples Canada opted for three Scandit Smart Data Capture products and utilized them as one seamless solution:

• Barcode Scanner SDK: Fast, accurate, and reliable barcode scanning for native applications.
• MatrixScan Augmented Reality (AR): Multiple barcode capture and real-time feedback using AR overlays.
• Price Label Capture: Automatic shelf and system price comparison that alerts associates to inaccuracies.

“With Scandit, we enabled associates to scan a large area of shelves and easily identify incorrect prices” Martel adds “We also built a capability to allow one-touch tag printing to update prices in real time.”

Staples Canada started with a three-store pilot supported by Scandit. Associates used the new app to manage inventory levels and movement, check and update prices in real time, and support customers.

With lessons learned and iterations made, the Scandit-powered app scaled to the district level and shortly after was deployed on 1,200 iPhones in all 298 of its stores in Canada.

Results

Since rolling out the Scandit-powered to all associates, Staples Canada has seen high usage thanks to its helpfulness and ease of use.

Since using Scandit, we’ve seen a huge increase in store associate engagement and productivity.

Lance Martel, CIO, Staples Canada

20,000 associate sessions and 200,000 app interactions per week across all stores have resulted in significant business benefits.

18,500 associate hours have been saved across 20,000 weekly pricing audits and corrections.

And moving to iPhones powered by Scandit, Staples Canada has seen a 45% reduction in hardware costs.

Once the Scandit Smart Data Capture implementation across all front and back-of-house tasks is complete, Staples Canada anticipates significant cost savings while ensuring 100% price compliance.

“The feedback from the associates around the application and use of Scandit has been overwhelmingly positive. Taking away the toil work that goes with working in retail is very important to making associates more engaged and more productive”, says Martel.

Back of the store focus

Initially, the deployment focused on front-of-store tasks.

Staples Canada intends to iterate and evolve the application and the partnership to take advantage of the full capabilities offered by Scandit Smart Data Capture.

The goal is to automate restocking, omnichannel fulfillment, cycle counting, and receiving. The batch scanning and counting offered by MatrixScan Count and the AR task guidance from MatrixScan Find will be vital in transforming Staples Canada’s operations and maximizing business benefits.