L’Incroyable stores in France, specialising in home accessories, gifts, games and toys are using Symbol’s MC9060-K and MC3070-K, within their warehouse and stores, to help streamline business process and operations, and enhance customer service.
Established in 1981 in Cambrai, L’Incroyable has 20 stores across France in places such as Amiens, Arras, Chalons, Maubege, Lens, Douai, Dunkerque, Metz, Reims, Tours, Valenciennes.
Previously, their entire logistics operations had been done manually. L’Incroyable decided to move forward with the latest technologies and looked at Symbol Technologies for a real-time solution to accurately manage all its operational activities in their warehouse, as well as in their stores.
Initially, L’Incroyable equipped its warehouse in Valenciennes with Symbol’s WS2000 wireless switch and PDT3142 handheld computers to manage the picking, delivery and inventory management within its logistics operations. In order to enhance productivity and customer service, the PDT3142s will be replaced by Symbol’s rugged MC9060-K mobile computers. By April 2006, 40 MC9060-K mobile computers will be fully operational.
The store staff was originally equipped with the PDT3142 handheld computer but L’Incroyable wanted to provide their employees with the latest mobile technologies. L’Incroyable chose Symbol’s MC3070-K and WS2000 wireless network and built a complete infrastructure to offer an improved service to its customers. Now store staff can give customers advice on product selection and even provide them rapid check-out services. In another application, if a problem arises in one of the stores, the MC3070-K camera can send a video of the problem to the head office to help solve it rapidly. Finally, Symbol’s Mobility Services Platform (MSP) has been implemented as part of the solution architecture. Using MSP, the entire system can be remotely monitored and each store provided with support services such as software upgrades, battery management, end user assistance and other network management.
The entire solution combining the rugged mobile computers, the wireless network and mobility software in the warehouse, as well as, in the stores help L’Incroyable to provide best class quality of service. In the future, L’Incroyable will deploy Symbol’s MK2000 kiosks to allow customers to have real-time access to even more information.