Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Customer Solution
Tablet PC Brings Increased Productivity to
Corner Stores
Published: November 2002
Convenience store giant 7-Eleven is evaluating the Tablet PC and
Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition to provide a natural, intuitive
computing experience for store employees. Workers can enter
merchandising data directly into their Tablet PCs with a digital pen,
enhancing data flow from the stores to the company’s network and
streamlining business processes—all while interacting with customers in
the store. When 7-Eleven maintenance crews replace pen and paper with
Tablet PCs during store asset surveys, the company estimates that it will
reduce the cost of field inventory work by an estimated U.S. $3–5 million
annually. Knowledge workers also can capitalize on the lightweight form
factor and Windows Journal note-taking utility to increase productivity
while on the road and in meetings.
Situation
7-Eleven pioneered the convenience store concept in 1927 at the Southland Ice Company in
Solution Overview
Customer Profile
7-Eleven, Inc., founded in 1927 in
Dallas, Texas, is the world's
largest operator, franchiser, and
licensor of convenience stores.
More than 23,700 units
worldwide, including 6,000 in the
United States and Canada serve
6 million customers a day.
Business Situation
7-Eleven is evaluating the Tablet
PC to eliminate bottlenecks in
collecting store profile data and to
improve knowledge workers’
productivity while out of the office.
Solution
Microsoft® Windows® XP
Tablet PC Edition provides all the
power of Windows XP
Professional plus enhancements
for pen-based computing in a
mobile, lightweight form factor.
Dallas, Texas. In addition to selling blocks of ice to refrigerate food, an enterprising ice dock
Benefits
employee began offering milk, bread, and eggs on Sundays and evenings when grocery stores
7-Eleven expects the Tablet PC
to:
 Reduce the need for
resurveys by 50–75 percent
 Save an estimated U.S.$3–5
million annually
 Improve knowledge workers’
productivity while away from
their desks
were closed. Not surprisingly, this new business idea produced satisfied customers and
increased sales. Today, 7-Eleven is the undisputed leader in convenience retailing with almost
24,000 stores operating in the United States and 18 other countries and U.S. territories and total
sales of more than U.S. $31 billion in 2001.
To a great extent, the company’s success comes from the fact that 7-Eleven still holds on to the
tenets of its origins: The essence of successful retail is based on the personal interaction
between customers and individual store operators. This strategy, called Retailer Initiative,
decentralizes decision-making responsibility and empowers store managers and field consultants
to leverage their understanding of local customers into making better retail business decisions.
Using technology to support its business model is another success factor for 7-Eleven.
“Technology is the driver behind our Retailer Initiative,” says Keith Morrow, Vice President of
Information Systems and CIO at 7-Eleven. “Our fundamental business model hasn’t changed, but
our operations have. We are a $10 billion company, with more than 23,000 stores, each typically
containing between 2,000 and 3,000 items. Technology can empower our people to make sense
of all that data. Anytime we can capitalize on technology right at the point of sale, we will do a
better job of understanding our customers to stay ahead of their needs.”
Software and Services
Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC
Edition
Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000
Microsoft Consulting Services
Hardware
Acer TravelMate 100
Solution
“The Tablet PC will allow us
When 7-Eleven heard about the Tablet PC and Microsoft ® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition, the
to reduce resurvey work in
company’s Director of Emerging Technologies immediately began thinking about the potential of
the field by 50 to 75 percent,
this latest evolution of the notebook computer. “We decided to participate in Microsoft’s Rapid
Adoption Program for the Tablet PC because we could see that the power, mobility, and
versatility of this new platform could help improve productivity and reduce costs for several user
groups in different business processes,” says Kathy Walsh.
“In particular, we liked the way the Tablet PC could be used right in the store by our maintenance
crews to take inventory, by our field consultants doing a store walk, and by our store managers as
they do merchandising—in short, by supporting our Retailer Initiative. Instead of using a notebook
PC, we envisioned how knowledge workers in our IT, Legal, and Demand Chain Integration
departments could take a Tablet PC with them on the road or to meetings and benefit from its
added capabilities.”
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, a superset of the Windows XP Professional operating system,
offers additional features to a notebook PC that allow a user to control the Tablet PC by using a
digital pen, create and save searchable handwritten documents and convert them into typed text
for use in other applications through the Microsoft Windows Journal utility. With a digital pen and
speech recognition capabilities, the Tablet PC becomes a writing pad that’s easily carried around
for maximum mobility. And by downloading the Microsoft Office XP Pack for Tablet PC, users can
integrate electronic “ink” into everyday Office XP programs. All 7-Eleven Tablet PCs are equipped
with Office XP, as well as the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC.
Benefits
To date, 7-Eleven has deployed Tablet PCs to users in the Demand Chain Integration, the IT, and
Maintenance groups. The company is looking at deploying Tablet PCs to its field consultants in
the future. There are two ways that 7-Eleven expects the Tablet PC to deliver business value:

By streamlining specific business processes through improved information flow from the
store to back-end systems

By improving the productivity of employees, who can use the Tablet PC more often and in
more situations than ever before
The Power of a Desktop in Your Hands
The Tablet PC gives users the portability of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with the power of a
desktop or notebook PC. Moreover, 7-Eleven developers are taking advantage of the powerful
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition platform to add ink and speech capabilities to the Store Profile
application used by maintenance crews—extending the power of the Tablet PC far beyond that of
a regular notebook PC.
“Deployed on the Tablet PC, this application can go wherever our maintenance crews go; up
ladders, into crawl spaces, or behind a Slurpee® beverage machine to get a serial number,” says
Morrow. “Instead of resorting to filling out lengthy store inventory surveys by hand, maintenance
crews can write or tap with their pens. They can also do drawings with rough measurements, for
example, if they recommend putting in a new machine. The Tablet PC is easy, intuitive, and
requires very little training.”
saving anywhere from $3
million to $5 million a year.”
Keith Morrow
Chief Information Officer
7-Eleven, Inc.
Versatility Drives Efficiency and Cuts Costs
Instant screen rotation that allows the user to carry the Tablet PC like a clipboard adds up to a
“The Tablet PC is a perfect
more natural computing experience for the maintenance workers as they complete store asset
tool for our retailers to make
surveys. Instead of having to rekey store inventory survey data back into the database, a
better decisions about
maintenance worker simply docks the Tablet PC at the end of the day to upload all the
satisfying customer needs.
information collected in the Store Profile application to the main database.
Once the data is uploaded to the database, it’s immediately accessible to other maintenance
crews and contractors. So, if 7-Eleven needs to hire a contractor to install a new six-barrel
Slurpee machine, all the information is immediately available to speed up that process: the
measurements and data from the store, notes about power availability, plumbing requirements,
where exactly the counter will have to be cut. Not only does this streamline a particular business
process, but it also allows 7-Eleven to electronically build an accurate, up-to-the-minute profile of
each store, reducing the need for resurveys or partial surveys just to change a coffee pot.
“The Tablet PC will allow us to reduce resurvey work in the field by 50 to 75 percent, saving
anywhere from $3 million to $5 million a year,” says Morrow.
Deploying Tablet PCs to field consultants, who spend most of the day on the road visiting the
stores and working with managers, will provide similar benefits. Field consultants fill out lengthy
paper questionnaires as they walk the store. This usually takes an hour and a half out of a
typical four-hour visit. They check everything from the fuel pumps to the dumpsters to the store
interior in great detail and confer with the manager using notes they’ve brought from the previous
meeting.
“Deploying the Tablet PC to our field consultants is another perfect scenario for this technology,”
says Morrow. “It’s difficult to find a spot to lay a notebook computer in a busy store, and typing
on a keyboard cuts down on interaction with the customers. Using the Tablet PC to input data
also makes that information readily accessible to anyone else in the company. It could be
instantly uploaded to our store managers’ knowledge portal, for example. We could also deploy
Tablet PCs to the store managers so they could walk around while they were doing their
merchandising, observing and interacting with the customers to refine a product order list to
meet their needs. Right now, store managers are confined to working at a desktop in the back
room.
“The Tablet PC is a perfect tool for our retailers to make better decisions about satisfying
customer needs,” Morrow adds. “That’s the essence of our Retailer Initiative and the key to our
success.”
Mobility Increases Productivity
The Tablet PC has added benefits to knowledge workers who spend a lot of time on the road or
in meetings. “I’m hearing loud and clear from our road warriors that the Tablet PC is a powerful
tool for being as productive as possible while away from their desks,” says Walsh.
David Anderson, Logistics Department Director and liaison with 10 Combined Distribution
Centers serving 7-Eleven stores in the western United States, concurs: “I quit using my notebook
PC in favor of the Tablet PC. During this trip to California, I didn’t have to pack large paper files. I
use the note-taking feature to organize and save information. In the last couple of weeks, I
attended 18 meetings, and I had all the information I needed to refer back to—and not one piece
of paper.”
That’s the essence of our
Retailer Initiative and the key
to our success.”
Keith Morrow
Chief Information Officer
7-Eleven, Inc.
In a corporate culture that discourages notebook computers in meetings, Walsh can still
discretely write the minutes in her steering committee meeting, send them in e-mail to participants
for review as soon as they get back to their offices, and have them published a few hours later.
For Morrow, who spends between one half to three quarters of each day out of his office, the
Tablet PC provides him with the productivity that comes with portable knowledge: “While on a
recent flight, I was talking with my colleagues and was able to refer back to the Tablet PC
Windows Journal utility where I store my notes. I was able to add significantly to our discussion
with three or four thoughts that I had written down, but had not remembered,” he says. “It’s hard
to measure how much specific ideas are worth, but the Tablet PC means I always have
information with me, where it’s the most valuable.”
Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition provides a more versatile computing experience,
enabling you to use your PC in more places and more ways.
For more information about Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/
For More Information
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For more information about 7-Eleven, visit the Web site at: http://www.7-11.com/
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