Peer-to-Peer

Wire-free transactions at mega sales

Managing hordes of shoppers during a mega sale is a herculean endeavor. Future Bazaar has introduced a wireless handheld scanner to expedite matters, writes Kushal Shah

The Indian retail sector is going through a paradigm shift with the entry of big players like Wal-Mart and Reliance. If we look at the statistics, as per the last report on Indian retail by Ernst & Young, currently the industry is pegged at $230 billion in India, and only three percent of the sector is organized. That’s all poised to change as organized retail is supposed to grow four-fold from $7 to $30 billion by 2010. All of which will need gobs of technology coupled with savvy marketing and branding in malls.

The customer is the boss

With changing shopping dynamics, consumers are becoming more powerful as a consequence of the options that they have on hand. It is commonplace amongst retailers to lure hordes of customers by offering goods at the cheapest rates in sales. By keeping the profit margins low, retailers are ensured brisk sales. Future Bazaar, a Future Group division, comes out with discount offers a couple of times a year, particularly around August 15 and January 26. The organization had, in fact, faced some bitter experiences in 2006, when during a sale, a riot-like situation had occurred in the vicinity of the Big Bazaar and Pantaloon outlets in Phoenix Mills, Mumbai.

A retail chain cannot do much about customer turnout, which is a result of focused pre-event marketing. When thousands of people land up, it leads to unimaginable chaos and life is hell for store managers. Problems emerge when shoppers have to stand in queues just to enter a store. The line never stops—to buy a product, pay the bill, and get out of the store—there is a queue everywhere. These queues deter many customers who return without making a purchase.

The Future Group is tech savvy, but even after deploying various IT solutions for the retail segment, like SAP and other systems, it needed a solution for a few days to reduce customer wait time and manage queues during mega sales. “During Maha Bachat Utsav, we have long queues for the big sale. We needed a way to bust these queues,” explained Tushar Bhatkar, CTO, Future Bazaar.

The hunt for a solution

The company was looking for a provider with retail expertise. It shortlisted some players and eventually picked a solution from Scan Infotech. “We called in some vendors and then asked them to demonstrate their expertise in handheld devices and then what they could specifically offer for the retail industry. We found Scan Infotech to be an apt partner and decided to go with them,” explained Bhatkar. A salesperson from Future Bazaar would show the catalog (with barcodes of every product) to a customer standing in a queue. If the latter decided to take that product he could finish his transaction then and there without entering the shop, and in some cases could even get that product delivered to his doorstep. This solution, a mobile computer handheld, which had a computer terminal, receipt generator and card swipe mechanism, all incorporated in a single device, was installed for Future Bazaar only for those five days of the sale period—Maha Bachat Utsav—August 11, 2007 to August 15, 2007 at Big Bazaar, Phoenix Mills, Mumbai. Future Bazaar kiosks outside the mall used these devices to take care of the mad rush on those days.

Wire-free solution

The mobile computer and printer are both wireless and connect to the host billing system in real-time. They used MP2 solution’s MRT 320 as the handheld device, which had a barcode reader, printer, computer and swipe card reader. After the items were scanned with handheld computers, a receipt was generated on a mobile printer. The receipt included a text listing of all the items, as well as the total amount collected or due. The customer presented his credit card for payment to be swiped through the card reader on the printer. This information was then encrypted and sent over a wireless LAN to the store’s transaction processing system for authorization, which in Future Bazaar’s case was the SAP retail solution. “Authorizations can be processed in seconds, the store staff completes the checkout transaction, and the customer just walks out without going to a regular checkout counter,” explained Noormohammed Haji, Director, Scan Infotech.

Even if something went wrong and the payment was not accepted by the handheld device when the customer reached the check-out counter, the cashier would still be in a position to generate a bill as the transaction had already been recorded in the store’s transaction processing system. Customers who have already got their mobile POS receipts could make the check-out process even faster by checking out the receipt they received from the mobile printer and have their money ready when they arrived at the cashier.

Implementation and difficulties

The whole process of this five-day solution took about 45 days after the vendor selection ended. The process was divided in three phases, viz. planning; procurement and development; and implementation and training. The process was headed by Bhatkar on the technology front and Sankarason Banerjee, CEO, Future Bazaar, took charge of the business decisions.

“Initially, we sat down and discussed what they wanted according to their problems. As they wanted to implement the solution, primarily outside the mall, it had to be wireless. Then we sat and decided on which equipment was the best. They had the option of a separate printer and computer. However, they opted for an all-in-one device and we went ahead with MP2 devices,” explained Haji. They decided on four such devices for this event.

The second phase involved procuring devices from a US company which took 25 days. Scan Infotech spent about 10 days on customizing middleware to hook up the devices to the backend servers.

As part of the last phase, the entire solution was deployed and integrated with existing infrastructure. Then, the staff were trained on using these devices by Scan Infotech. “The only major difficulty was integration with our SAP system. Whenever you try to integrate SAP with any other solution, you face some data path problems, which were sorted out with the help of our past experiences,” explained Bhatkar. This bit was handled by Future Bazaar’s staff, with the rest being Scan Infotech’s responsibility.

“Now after completing the task with these devices during sale days, we are looking to further roll-out these devices across all our shops in India. This process will be gradual,” explained Bhatkar. The scalability of these devices and almost zero maintenance allows anyone to multiply these devices without any worries and straightway increase revenue during rush periods. As part of the roll-out strategy, it had used this solution at its Dombivli outlet and if all goes to plan, customers will not have to wait in long queues at any Pantaloon or Big Bazaar outlet again.

kushal.shah@expressindia.com