The World’s first Bluetooth Roaming Solution
WH Smith PLC is one of the UK’s leading retail groups. The High Street stores sell a wide range of newspapers, stationery, books and entertainment products.
Each year around 70% of the UK’s population visit a WHSmith store, with just over 1.2 million people visiting a store each day of the year. They sell in excess of 40 million books a year and 1.5 million magazines every week.
The aims of introducing handheld terminals to the shop floor were primarily to make daily operational activities in store more efficient, and to improve the efficiency and accuracy of stock replenishment. Other key goals were to enable store management to staff accordingly to the customer and trading need rather than the operational task requirement. WHSmith wanted to deploy a multifunctional solution into stores to reduce the risk associated in being reliant on multiple technologies and overall reduce the in-store operational costs to deliver positive profit and loss bottom line results. WHSmith selected Nordic ID’s RF651 Handheld terminals in partnership with BT Expedite, who are the architects of the WHSmith IT infrastructure. The solution roll-out started in October 2006 and to date have installed over 1,500 RF651’s, with 2021 Bluegiga Access Servers and 557 Paxar Bluetooth printers in all high street stores.
The Nordic ID RF651’s were chosen for their ease of use and affordable price. Not only have they proven to be very easy to train the WHSmith staff how to use, but also very easy to add a new software function to.
This solution provided by Nordic ID and BT Expedite is the World’s first roaming Bluetooth solution. The RF651 is a Bluetooth terminal that connects remotely to the Bluetooth module in the Bluegiga Access Servers. The handsets will then automatically ‘roam’, connecting to the Access Server that gives out the strongest signal. The roaming Bluetooth network covers the whole store environment. This is not only the largest Bluetooth installation on Europe, but also the first Bluetooth ‘Roaming’ solution in the World.
Another influencing factor in choosing Nordic ID hardware is the security of the network infrastructure. The Bluetooth network can be throttled to ensure that it is only available within the WHSmith store environments, and can only be seen by approved devices which include the handheld terminals and printers.
Since the installation WHSmith have reported the following benefits, directly attributed to Nordic ID’s in store scanning solution:
• Shop floor product enquiry - 10% efficiency improvement
• Shop floor tactical shelf edge label printing – 50% efficiency improvement
• Inventory container receiving – 80% efficiency improvement
• The management of recall activity – 10% efficiency improvement
• Cards return process – 50% efficiency improvement
• Remote product file adjustment – 40% efficiency improvement
The following impacts have also been realised, again directly related to the solution provided by Nordic ID and BT Expedite:
• £1.3 million staff efficiency savings
• Significant stock savings through data accuracy and efficient stock processes
• Improved store standards
Steve Wood, Head of Central Operations at WHSmith gave the following quote, “The Nordic ID hand held terminals have been well received by store staff enabling a reduction in admin tasks such as updating deliveries which can now be completed on the sales floor without being tied to back office systems. The hand held terminals are versatile and are continually being improved with additional functionality to benefit store efficiency further.”
