"Diamonds are a girl's best friend!" Marilyn Monroe immortalized this phase in the film "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," to the delight of the jewelry industry. However, as every woman knows, glittering jewelry is usually accompanied by other accessories to complete an ensemble. This is where bags and purses come into play. Men have come to notice this too in recent times. Mobile phones, cameras, wallets, iPods or iPads have to be kept safe. Therefore, the market now offers a vast choice of bags, suitcases and other accessories for all occasions to cover all needs.
Beheim International Brands in Obertshausen sells Camel active, Gabor and Tom Tailor bags. These items are introduced all over the world in trade shows and showrooms before they become available on the retail market. Beheim has a very short time to showcase thousands of items because exhibitions usually don't last more than 3 days. The challenge Beheim faced was to create an automatic and continuous order entry system that could optimize processes and promote sales activities in real time. "The more orders we write, the more turnover is generated." underlines Christoph Edrich, Purchase and Finances Manager at Beheim International Brands GmbH & Co KG.
Datalogic Mobile Partner, Elis Software, offered Beheim the ideal solution using the Memor™, laptops and a radio network. "Elis offered us a solution that was as simple as it was brilliant," remarks Edrich. Elis had already worked for us on the Web shop of Beheim International Brands. This proved to be an advantage because the merchandise management system and interfaces were already known. The solution Elis devised was a natural evolution of this, which could be integrated into the existing chain with no problems."
The procedure starts with bags and accessories receiving barcodes during production to assure easy tracking and documentation association through the shipping and receiving process. In this manner, the Memor™ can capture the barcode at each transaction throughout the enterprise. Within the showroom, communication works by radio. Each showroom - with up to 350 square meters - has a radio network that allows the Memor™ to communicate via WLAN and access points with the store's laptop. Communication with Beheim headquarters is then handled by the store laptop with a secure direct connection to the merchandise management system. "The access point covers 30 - 300 meters and reaches a standard 802.11b data transfer rate of 11 Mbit/s with response times of less than one second, which was exactly what we wanted," mentioned Gerd Staub at Elis-Software GmbH.
In simple terms, before the use of the order entry system with the Memor™, the thousands of articles ordered daily had to be entered manually after looking through a large pile of article lists. Now, the salesman enters the customer number, scans the barcode of the desired article with the Memor™, selects the relative color and enters the quantity. Within seconds the laptop communicates the information to headquarters. Once all the data has been collected, the salesman closes the order. At this point, the order has been entered, order confirmation is given to the customer and the order can be prepared for shipping from Obertshausen. "It's a Win-Win-Situation in every respect", emphasizes Edrich "the customers are happy because there is more time to dedicate to article selection, the CEO is satisfied because sales volumes increase and the salesman is content because he can concentrate on helping the customer."
Thanks to this mobile solution, today order input at Beheim International Brands is done quickly without any paperwork. Thanks to the automated order entry system using the Memor™, errors are reduced to a minimum. Long walking distances and endless paper lists are all in the past. In addition, each exhibition can be evaluated immediately, enabling instant success analysis. "For Beheim the mobile solution brought greater efficiency and made work easier," states Edrich. "Processes in the showroom and for inventory have been significantly optimized by means of the mobile solution."
Customer: Beheim International Brands GmbH & Co. KG
Industry: Retail
Application: Assisted Sales, Data Management
Country: Germany
Datalogic Mobile Solution: Retail In-Store
Datalogic Mobile Products: Memor™
Datalogic Mobile Partner: Elis Software GmbH
