Retailer optimizes inventory accuracy and increases sales!
Inventory accuracy has a direct impact on sales and the future growth of a company. Thus, retailers are using modern technology to avoid and eliminate poor stock accuracy and significantly increase their ability to serve their customers.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) has become more and more popular among retailers as the versatile technology helps boost sales and drive loss prevention at the same time – an experience DENSO’s client from the retail sector is happy to share. In comparison to a bar code, RFID lets retailers identify individual items, cases or pallets wirelessly, with richer data and without need for a line of sight.
DENSO’s retail client’s goals were to increase the overall stock accuracy at a store level and see if that directly impacted sales. And these goals were met: More than 97 % stock accuracy and 5 % sales increase have been achieved with the use of RFID. But how exactly?
RFID Use Case written by Denso Wave, one of the drivers of the Internet of Things!
Do you have questions about RFID or would you like to test the technology without obligation? David Walker, Business Development Manager – RFID Solutions, at DENSO WAVE EUROPE will be happy to advise you.
19 Mar 2024 - DENSO Presents Cutting-Edge Technologies
The retailer runs annual stock-takes in all their stores as an opportunity to cleanse their stock files. At that point, their stock accuracy is in the high 90s. As little as six weeks after though, stock file inaccuracies would begin to affect the replenishments to stores. What the retailer needed were ways to stock-take a store at least every week. That is where DENSO came in – with RFID.
Instead of doing a trial run with just a few stores, this client went bigger. They decided to encode virtually everything in their stores: from clothing to jewellery line. In addition, they dedicated a central team to analyse and audit the RFID data management.
For the RFID trial stores, the products were separated in the retailer’s distribution centre and then tagged and encoded with RFID inlays. As desired, this had a direct effect on the stock-take. Once a week, the employees attended a store and conducted an RFID full-store stock count by walking around with their respective RFID handheld, scanning everything and uploading data to the RFID cloud. When that step was completed, other team members downloaded and reviewed the collected data.
Initially, the retailer’s stock accuracy was in the mid 70 per cent range, with some stores significantly lower than that. By implementing RFID, accuracy was raised up to 98 per cent for all stores within just two weeks. And even better: It remained consistent week after week.
08 Nov 2023 - Update to Tiramisu: Android 13 for DENSO Handhelds
In addition to the increase in accuracy, DENSO’s client wanted to know how RFID affected their sales. Therefore, they analysed the RFID tagged products’ performances and data. It was found, that, within a six-week period before and after the trial, tagged versus non-tagged products were generating an eight per cent positive sales variance, meaning that their stores’ collective average was three per cent higher than the initial target.
In the future, DENSO’s retail client plans to implement RFID in all of their stores and bring RFID further up the supply chain. That way, they can boost direct sales, track stolen products, and become even more successful when taking innovative steps on the path to face omni-channel and online challenges. This retailer is ready to serve their customers immediately – with RFID as their competitive advantage.
