Honeywell Introduces Solutions to Help Retailers Address Associate and Customer Safety Guidance Challenges

As retail stores reopen, retailers are experiencing anxious shoppers and associates who want to experience some level of normalization and be safe. Because of the health crises, retailers have seen dramatic shifts in online ecommerce with sustained growth in click and collect, curbside pickup, and home delivery to meet shopper demand while adhering to social distancing protocols. According to an Adobe report released in June, online spending in May 2020 hit $82.5 billion, up 77% year-over-year. This growth would have taken 4-6 years of normal growth to get to these levels. ¹

According to Gartner², retailers will be focused on adapting and shaping the customer experience.  This includes

• Redefine the physical estate. Retailers will transition locations from pure sales to a reduced selling footprint with increased on-site fulfillment capabilities. 
• Ready the workforce. Frontline associates, especially those who have worked through the health crises remind us all just how vital associates are to retail. The workforce needs to be optimized with resources, automation and overall digital dexterity to maximize productivity and safety.
• Move the merchandise. Retailers will have greater emphasis and investment in technologies that will be required to converge online to offline experiences for improving customer purchasing confidence as well as opportunities to shorten the supply chain to increase product accessibility and personalization.
• Enhance service & experience. While retailers improvised to extend services during the health crises, customers will expect the increased convenience to continue. This creates the opportunity for retailers to embed greater personalization, fulfillment flexibility and new ways of proactively selling to customers.

Honeywell Retail Solutions

Honeywell understands the challenges retailers are facing and has developed solutions to assist. In response, we have launched a comprehensive effort to quickly develop solutions that address our customer needs with device and software innovation, applying technology advances in new ways and leveraging our global partner network.

Technologies have been designed to support social distancing and new cleaning procedures, while maintaining a focus on associate productivity. We are dedicated and committed to helping our customers ensure retail recovery, as critical merchandise retailers contend with high demand and non-critical merchandise retailers prepare to reopen. These solutions include:

Software to Address Health and Safety Requirements.

Honeywell has expanded the feature set of Operational Intelligence with ability to monitor on-site social distancing compliance, help enforce customizable device cleaning procedures and deploy software to digitally trace who has handled each device.

Operational Intelligence software is a remote asset management platform that helps retailers keep their mobile-equipped associates productive, while allowing them to return to the workplace by supporting local site health and safety compliance requirements.

The new features provide associates and managers with real-time data to better respond to critical factors for businesses re-opening under modified conditions due to rapidly evolving health and safety guidelines. The features include:

• Social Distancing Proximity Detection allows organizations to prioritize and monitor social distancing practices. The feature monitors the proximity between Honeywell devices and logs alerts, allowing frontline workers to promote social distancing and adhere to safety guidelines.
• Check Out/In assigns unique devices or assets to a specific associate, creating a chain of custody that provides managers device tracing data. This will provide real time visibility to each device’s location throughout the store, thereby eliminating the additional costs and hassle of ‘devices that go missing’.
• Device Cleaning Management gives you the ability to set-up configurable cleaning protocols for each asset. Configurations can be on an hourly, daily or in-between shift basis. Each cleaning event will be logged with the user, time and date for reporting. In addition, the feature can also send alerts to clean other assets and areas of the worksite.
• Remote Control and Remote Wipe give IT administrators the availability to quickly take control of a device in any location to investigate and fix issues remotely and digitally wipe devices to original factory settings.
• Customer Counter provides associates the ability to help enforce retail location occupancy levels. By stationing associates at multiple entrances and exits with this cloud-based, easy-to-use feature, it allows them to simply add or subtract shoppers who enter and leave the store. This real-time data is shared with employees at multiple entrances of a store to remain in-sync and count as customers enter and exit.

Honeywell Smart Talk for In-store Communications.

Honeywell Smart Talk is a true voice-enabled unified workforce communications application that tackles the problem of fragmented communications. You receive enterprise-grade security for voice calling, text and media messaging, and user presence.  Smart Talk can be added to Honeywell CT40 XP Mobile Computer or to most types of mobile devices associates already carry. Device-enabled associates are always connected and able to access critical information from company headquarters, on the sales floor, or in the backroom. It minimizes contact as they continue to comply with safe distance rules, while keeping their focus on meeting shopper needs.

See the article: Retailers Adopt In-Store Communications to Help Enforce New Safety Protocol

Honeywell General-purpose Devices with Disinfectant-Ready Housing.

Honeywell is introducing a broad range of its most commonly used scanners, mobile computers, and printers with disinfectant-ready housings (DRH) for general purpose applications.

This is the same DRH that Honeywell designed to withstand the rigorous cleaning protocols required to address the infection and disease control needs of the healthcare industry. Disinfectant-ready housing has been used in the healthcare industry for more than a decade.

These devices can be used throughout the warehouse, logistics and retail industries with the same ease of use as standard Honeywell products but can standup to rigorous cleaning protocols.  For more information see:

• Honeywell Announces Complete Line of General-purpose Devices with Disinfectant-ready Housing
• Honeywell Instructions for Cleaning General Purpose Disinfectant-Ready Housing Devices

Honeywell CT40 XP Mobile Computer Designed for the Needs of the Retail Associate.

The Honeywell CT40 XP is a one stop solution for store associates and other mobile workers to seamlessly accomplish daily operations from inventory lookup and in-store merchandising to last mile delivery, logistics and more. The Honeywell CT40 XP Mobile Computer, available in DRH general purpose, uses 4G LTE wireless, Wi-Fi, and IP-based business communications. CT40 XP is built on the Honeywell Mobility Edge™ Platform, our unified mobile computing platform designed for faster IT deployments, optimized business performance, longer lifecycle and stronger security.

Honeywell Offers A Full lineup of Retail Solutions.

Retail recovery comes down to shaping the shopper experience, and Honeywell is here to help. Honeywell’s retail solutions are trusted by retail leaders worldwide. Our solutions are simple to integrate with existing IT infrastructure, shortening ramp-up times and getting critical technology in place to meet today’s demand. Honeywell offers a full line-up of retail solutions, including mobile computers, printers, scanners and software.

For more information, visit Honeywell Retail Solutions or Contact Honeywell Solutions Experts today! Call 1-800-934-3163.

¹ COVID-19 Accelerated E-Commerce Growth ‘4 To 6 Years’

² Gartner. Grand Reopening: Retail Playbook for Stores Post COVID-19. Joanne Joliet. Published 27 April 2020

Consult these articles for more information.

1. Retailers Adopt In-Store Communications to Help Enforce New Safety Protocol 
2. 17 Reasons to Upgrade Your Retail In-Store Communications 
3. Top 10 Reasons Retailers Upgrade to Area Imagers
4. How to Use Honeywell’s Guided Work—Retail for Click and Collect
5. 50-plus Critical Actions Groceries Are Making to Protect Workers and Shoppers
6. Grocers Using Honeywell Secondary Scanners in Checkout to Minimize Shopper/Cashier Contact
7. How Retailers are Shifting to Click and Collect with Curbside Option
8. How Grocers Adapting to Surging Demand for Click and Collect