Case Study
Mobile Printing ◆ Wireless
Go Wireless
With Mobile Printing
Shopko generates $100,000 savings and cuts equipment downtime 75% with a
new label printing solution.
by Vicki Amendola
Kathy Loch, manager of store operations support at
Shopko, says that O'Neil mobile printers have played
a key role in improving both productivity and pricing
integrity.
Mobile Printing ◆ Wireless
Case Study
“Shopko’s dual platform mobile printing solution is an innovation
in retail, and I believe we will see task-driven, mobile printing
emerge as a solid trend in 2008.”
Photos by Tom Fr tz Stud os, Inc.
Troy Stelzer, Storeworks
It’s no secret that keeping your employ
ees out on the selling floor is an impor
tant step in increasing customer satis
faction. What is less obvious, however,
is the impact of price label availability
and accuracy. Very rarely are prices
printed directly on products anymore,
making customers rely on the accuracy
of the shelf tag when making purchase
decisions based on cost. Inaccurate
tags not only frustrate customers, they
can also impact your store’s profit by
forcing one time price reductions or,
worse yet, a lost sale.
Shopko is a $2.2 billion retailer with 135
stores across the Midwest, Mountain, and
Pacific Northwest regions of the United
States. Like most large retailers, the com
pany’s stores go through numerous price
changes and department resets each year,
printing and reprinting thousands of
shelf labels so customers will know the
correct prices. The company was using a
tethered (wired) system for mobile print
ing needs. Label printers relied on a
cabled connection to a handheld com
puter, and this connection was prone to
failure. Even with six printers in each
store, Shopko soon found itself strapped
by the restrictions of its tethered print
ers.
During times of high volume print
ing, such as seasonal planogram resets,
the restrictive one employee to one
printer ratio, and the dependence on a
cable connected handheld limited pro
ductivity. “The problems with our
portable printers had become the most
visible technology problem in our
stores and needed to be addressed,”
says Don Intile, director of application
integration services for Shopko.
December 2007
Different Applications
Call For Different Printers
Discussion with store employees
revealed a need for two distinct printer
models. The first would be a small,
wearable printer for minor print jobs.
The second would be more robust with
a larger media capacity and extended
battery life to handle volume print jobs.
Due to the company’s disappointment
in the performance and reliability of its
tethered printing system, Shopko want
ed to go wireless. Storeworks, the com
pany’s systems integrator, identified
O’Neil as the printer manufacturer best
suited to the project.
Shopko worked with Storeworks to
integrate O’Neil OC3 and LP3 wireless
printers to satisfy Shopko’s portability
and high volume print requirements.
“The combination of the O’Neil LP3
and OC3 allowed us to
outfit Shopko associates with the right
mobile printer for the task at hand,” says
Troy Stelzer, VP of sales at Storeworks.
“Shopko’s dual platform mobile printing
solution is an innovation in retail, and I
believe we will see task driven, mobile
printing emerge as a solid trend in 2008.”
The printers operate on Shopko’s
secure 802.11 b/g wireless platform in
conjunction with Symbol PDT handheld
scanners. Both printers use the same
media, batteries, and more importantly,
operate using the same print stream
information. Store employees now have
the capability to send print jobs to either
printer on demand by simply scanning
the printer’s serial number bar code.
One of the features Shopko is most
excited about is the ability to activate
price changes at the time of label print
ing. Before, all price change labels were
printed at once, and the
price changes would be
active before the labels were
put on the shelves. “When
you’re looking at customer
satisfaction and pricing
integrity, that is key mak
ing sure that the customer
knows what the price of a
given item is based on the label
on the shelf,” says Kathy Loch,
manager of store operations sup
port at Shopko. “You have to
have the correct label on the
shelf to be able to do that, and
that’s been a huge win for us.”
Shopko’s mobile printer applica
tion holds the downloaded price
change information until the
Shopko chose O’Neil OC3 (inset) and LP3 wireless mobile
employee
actually prints the new
printers to satisfy both its ad hoc and volume label printing needs.
shelf label on the store floor.
www.ISMRetail.com
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Case Study
Mobile Printing ◆ Wireless
In addition to holding price changes in
queue, the custom software also priori
tizes labels in planogram order. In the
case of price changes, it actually walks
the employee logically through each
department from left to right, rather
than sending them from department to
department. “It has absolutely improved
our productivity and efficiency at the
store level,” says Loch. “Now we can
have different teammates working on
different tasks, and the wireless printer
provides them the opportunity to get
their jobs done more quickly.”
Going Wireless
Cuts Maintenance Costs
Although gains in employee productiv
ity and efficiency are a positive benefit,
the project’s success can best be mea
sured in terms of maintenance savings.
Equipment downtime had been a
major problem for Shopko, and aver
32
www.ISMRetail.com
age annual cost to replace failed printer
cables alone was nearly $80,000.
Damaged or malfunctioning printers
were handled through the company’s
in house repair depot. This required
stores to send the printer in prior to
receiving a replacement. It wasn’t
uncommon for turnaround time to be
seven days or more.
Along with the new printing solution,
Shopko took advantage of the O’Neil
Printer Express maintenance program.
Rather than going through the in house
depot, O’Neil picks up the calls coming
into Shopko’s help desk, and, if the call
is made prior to 4 p.m., a new printer will
arrive at the store the next morning.
Based on what he has seen since the new
printers went online, Ray Petersen, CTO
and VP of e commerce at Shopko, esti
mates that equipment downtime will be
reduced by at least 75%.
“We’ve eliminated the entire cable
Wireless mobile printers help Shopko maintain pricing integrity by activating price
changes at the time of label printing.
replacement effort,” says Petersen, “and
we are maintaining our printers with an
advance ship program for less than it
cost to support our own five to seven
day depot program.” Overall estimated
savings are expected to average
$100,000, and the company has not even
begun to quantify the savings based on
increased employee productivity. ❏
For More Information On O’Neil
Go To www.oneilprinters.com
December 2007