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TECH TALK
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IS THE RETAIL
SECTOR MAKING
THE MOST OF IOT?
Despite the retail sector realising the potential of IoT devices,
Mark Thomson, Director of Retail and Hospitality EMEA, at Zebra
Technologies, believes opportunities are being lost to maximise
their effectiveness in the face of increased competition.
Y
ou would be hard pressed to find a
retailer who doesn’t want greater
insight into what is happening within
its stores and warehouses – and why it’s
happening. Perhaps that’s why Zebra’s 2019
Intelligent Enterprise Index revealed a record
number of retailers accelerating their efforts
to become ‘intelligent.’
According to the annual study, the global
retail sector’s ‘intelligence score’ increased
6.7% points from 2018 to 2019 to reach
62.1. That’s only one point lower than the
highest-scoring healthcare sector. It also
represents the largest year-over-year gain
among all sectors.
www.intelligentcio.com
Why intelligence scores matter
more than ever
Retailers are now highly focused on
‘returns.’ They want to know how they
keep customers returning to their stores
amid fierce competition and how to
minimise product returns. They also want
to understand how best to maximise their
return on investment (ROI) for any new
resources dedicated to accomplishing such
goals. Sometimes, that entails augmenting
or expanding the workforce. In other
cases, it requires process re-engineering or
workflow automation. But it always involves
technology in some capacity.
“
BARCODE-BASED
SYSTEMS AND
MOBILE DEVICES
ARE HIGHLY
VERSATILE AND
COULD QUICKLY
BE CONFIGURED
TO WORK WITHIN
MORE ADVANCED
IOT-BASED
ARCHITECTURES.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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