Three Ways SOTI & Renovotec Help With Retail’s Golden Quarter Demand Planning.

This is the peak season, where retail organisations are in their ‘ramping up’ stage, retail week called this in retail’s Golden Quarter Report in 2021. A report that helps to provide some insight into how to prepare for this year.

All organisations will be planning now for their busiest seasons between Black Friday and the run up to Christmas. Warehouse stocking, order fulfilment and backend order processes, all need to be robust to handle a huge ramp up in demand. There are several socio-economic factors at play. Such as a rise in home working becoming the norm. The rise in online sales increasing and the rise in prices. As well as the supply chain costs and delays costing form orders and loyal customers. All of which are impacting demand.

Read on to find out three core ways Renovotec and SOTI can help with your retail planning:

1. Facilitation Of Production & Planning

Retail planning is more volatile today than ever before. Due to the supply chain issues, shortage of materials and associated supply and fuel price increases. Accurate forecasting and predictions are therefore harder than what can be facilitated by device data capture. Barcode scanners, handheld terminals, mobile devices, mobile computers all capture a variety of essential business data.

Roles have changed and evolved over the past few years. Therefore impacting the integration of forms used and the effect this has on business operations.

“At this crucial planning time, organisations need to be certain at least that the devices they have are capable of the job at hand, and if a specific job function has changed, that the device can handle the new demands,” says Faki Saadi, Director of Sales, France, Belgium and Luxembourg at SOTI.

Operational insight and interpretation of essential Business data is the lifeblood of an organisation. It is critical today more than ever, that device data is captured securely. And can be analysed and used to improve processes. This also applies to devices themselves and ensuring that devices are working optimally with great battery health to last full shifts and with user access to the right applications and data securely.

Richard Gilliard says, “SOTI XSight enables your entire device fleet to have a health check: you can see when battery health is declining and decide whether to replace the handset or replace the battery. This can save organisations tens of thousands of pounds per year by taking this one step.”

2. Enabling Processes To Scale

With retail digital payments evolving at a rapid pace, this is a complex environment to manage. Ecommerce transaction value and mobile POS payments in 2021 was reported to have reached £255,819 million. Furthermore it is expected to reach £305,738 million in 2022, states the British Retail Consortium. This coupled with the introduction of new processes and devices online and instore, alongside a change in buyer behaviour as a ‘buy now pay later’ mentality is being normalised in retail. This often results in a huge range of devices being used. Therefore a wide variety of different OS and support knowledge is required, to keep the device fleet maintained and updated. Keeping retail alive is an enormous challenge.

“Working with global partners like SOTI reassures our customers that they are in safe hands when it comes to any support or configuration requirements and any device enhancements made. As a global partner, SOTI has a close working relationship across all manufacturers, as well as ourselves at Renovotec. This ensures alignment of all solutions, and that everything passes a global seal of approval prior to implementation,” states Richard Gilliard, Managing Director at Renovotec.

3. Flexible Device Planning

Dialling the device fleet size up and down pre and during peak seasons and then ramping down post peak season is now possible. Thanks to the new way of managing devices introduced by Renovotec in 2021. In response to the pandemic, managing devices and securing the latest models but with such a fear around long term budget commitments, enabled Renovotec to deliver a new service offering to their customers to great effect. Alongside SOTI:

“Business today is about being agile and scaling up and down as required. SOTI’s EMM solutions alongside Renovotec’s rental device proposition is perfect in many retail scenarios where these challenges are prevalent and there is a need to configure and deploy to your network in minutes,” says Faki Saadi.

Recruitment and training need to happen now during the quieter summer months. Whilst there is time to train staff up and get them familiar with the tools and processes for the role. Organisations need to resource up now and get staff trained. However, there is an economic shortage of employees and associated issues with pay and retention.

“During uncertain times it is often problematic for businesses to accurately budget for devices and associated monthly device services and support. Renovotec has created flexible hardware and software solutions that facilitate on demand rental, with SOTI’s EMM solutions bundled. This ensures you get the full functionality and insight needed from your device deployment and management now, without the concern of long-term budget constraints or issues in the future,”  says Richard Gilliard, Managing Director of Renovotec.

Contact us for further information.