Results of a recent 2009 hospitality industry survey by Motorola found that the importance of mobility in the industry is rising, with 82% of its deceision makers reporting an increased importance of mobility within their industry.

The push for competitive differentiation was cited as a key mobility driver, with over 60% of decision makers agreeing that their company gained a competitive advantage through mobile and wireless technologies.

Its key advantages included heightened customer satisfaction, increased per-person average and improved inventory accuracy and visibility, where over 43% reported 34.9% average increase in customer satisfaction and 27% increase in per-person average.

“Mobility is viewed as the future enabler of growth,” said Frank Riso, senior director, Motorola Industry Solutions Group. “When compared to a representative set of emerging technologies, 53% of respondents felt that wireless and reservations would provide the greatest impact tho their organisation within the next five year,” Riso added at a media briefing at Motorola Technology's office in Petaling Jaya recently.

According to retail Information System (RIS) News – Retail technology Study of April, 2009, respondents identified the key retail strategies over the next 18 months as – To improve customer service or experience – 78%,  reduce store-level costs – 62%, improve workforce productivity or efficiency – 55%, improve IT network security – 42%, to use technology to reduce costs – 35%, to improve store-level inventory visibility – 32%, and to reduce incidences of being out of stock – 31%.

The key retail technology updates over the next 18 months are to upgrade their mobile computers/scanners – 34%, to implement voice solutions – 32%, to update their in-store servers – 30%, to install kiosks – 27%, and to implement digital signage or displays – 17%.

“Retailers tend to call mobile computers 'scanners,' when they are in fact imagers – ie cameras - which can take a picture of one- or two-dimensional bar code and decode it, whilst scanners use a laser to scan only one-dimensional bar codes,”  explained Riso.

Actual cases

The key retail applications over the next 18 months are price optimisation – 54%, price markdown – 49%, inventory management – 41%, replenishment – 40%, assortment planning – 32% and space planning – 24%.

Price optimisation is the highest price which the market will bear, whilst space planning is how to layout items on shelves.

Its handheld and handsfree scanners are used in a variety of point-of-sale (POS) applications and mobile POS is especially useful for big events. Imagers are becoming more popular than scanners and Motorola's imagers now work as fast as its laser scanners.

Its new DS9808 hybrid presentation scanner is used with RFID tags in fashion stores and can understand patterns of product movement (ie sales).

Around 2,000 stores, those in the Stop&Shop and Waitrose chains, as well as Co-op stores in Germany, Italy and others use Motorola as part of their portable shopping system.

For example, Stop&Shop gives their customers scanners to scan and record their purchases as they shop and pack them in bags as they go along, which shortens the checkout process, since their only pay. Whilst they are shopping, the scanner also displays targeted messages and promotions from over 50 brands.

The Macy's department store uses mobile POS carried by sales assistants, especially during busy periods and it lets customers sign for their purchases on its screen to charge them to their credit card.

Motorola will launch its Digital Loyalty Solution in the US in January. It is a managed service which lets retailers digitise membership cards and send them to their customer's cellular phone by SMS. The customer then opts in and shows the membership card on the phone at every purchase. The retailer controls the marketing messages and customer lists, and the policies governing offers, incentives and so on.

The customer can also be allowed to scan a bar code and sent it via SMS to redeem a gift as part of a loyalty programme. This has already been used in South Korea and Japan for many years.

Motorola's Micro Kiosk solutions, such as the MK500 Micro Kiosk is a Windows CE 5.0 based touchscreen device which for example lets garment customers in a changing rooms request the sales assistant to bring a garment of a different size, whilst its MK4000 Kiosk with a 12.1 inch VGA LCD touch screen is used for for self service ordering.

The Casual Male clothing store installed Motorola's mobile CRM solution which lets store assistants review and update their clients' information in real time and has a full featured clientelling application including loyalty status and previous shopping trends.

Motorola's key solutions for inventory management include Replenishment, Price Management, Inventory Management, Delivery Management, Return to Vendor, RFID Stock Management and Receiving.

For example, American Apparel, Marks & Spencer and Bloomingdale take daily inventory using RFID.

Boscov's replaced its old method of scanning merchandise with batch download from mobile computer to PC, with a real-time system using Motorola MC9000 mobile computers which immediately transferred the data captured to its information system and thus achieved 15% reduction in manpower, improved quality and accuracy and a return on investment which paid for the cost of the upgrade to wireless.

Motorola's key solutions for associate effectiveness include Mobile Manager solutions, Customer Services, Product Locator, Task Management, In-store Communications, Connected Associates and POS Manager.

Mobile Manager lets managers with a mobile phone such as the Motorola CA 50 with integrated bar code scanner and data application support, to work whilst on the shop floor and to be able to for example obtain the price of an item, locate an item and stay in touch at all times.

For example, 750 Tesco store managers in the UK are able to check their calendar, e-mail, pricing, review store sales reports, look up products and the sales performance of an item or category of items on their handheld devices.

Motorola's mobility solutions for restaurants include Table side or Poolside Ordering, Hosted Assisted Queue Busting, Mobile POS Manager, checking on the quality of food based on its time stamp, inventory management and wireless printing of receipts.

For example, table side is done with an MC75 Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA) fitted with an add-on module which lets customers key their debit card PIN, which the module then encrypts and transfers to the MC75 which in turn transmits it over-the-air to the payment system using WPA2 encryption.

Using such a system, Sam's Chowder House was able to realise an ROI in a month, increased sales by 30%, turned tables around 10 to 15 minutes faster, increased per-person average by US$4, reduced front-of-house labour by 12%, improved employee retention and efficiency.

In sports and entertainment, Motorola's mobility solutions are used in Seat side Ordering & Payment, POS scanning at concessions, Mobile Marketing, Food Quality Assurance and Safety, Ticket Validation and to keep mobile staff connected with each other.

Four major league baseball stadia – namely KC Royals, New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals use from 30 to 90 Motorola MC70 devices in seat-side ordering for club level seats. These devices can take credit cards or scan tickets to pay on the spot.

Over 2000 LS2280 general purpose bar code scanners are connected to POS terminals in concession and retail stores which can top up the stored value in scan tickets. These innovations have increased sales by 5 to 10% per game.

Motorola's hotel mobility solutions include Mobile Manager, Mobile Check-in/Concierge, Facilities Management, Asset Tracking, Service Staff, Connected Hotel, Wireless & Video Services.

Mydin, Tesco, 7-Eleven and Jusco use various Motorola Mobile Solutions products.

A device to suit your needs

Motorola Mobility Solutions includes a whole slew of end-user devices, including mobile computers with WiFi, wide-area network and voice communications capabilities. These include the highly ruggedised MC9000, MC3000, MC1000, FR6000 and other industrial-class mobile computers and the FR 68, MC35, MC55, MC70, MC75 and other enterprise-class mobile computers.

Each of these devices has different features. For example, the MC9000 has options for wireless wide-area network (wireless WAN), wireless local-area network (wireless LAN or WiFi) and wireless personal-area network (wireless-PAN), The FR6000 supports 1D bar codes, imaging wireless WAN, LAN and PAN access, 3G and GPS with real-time data update, whilst the MC1000 is a 1D bar-code scanner with batch update when synchronised.

The MC55, 70 and 75 enterprise devices read 1D and 2D bar codes, imaging, wireless WAN, LAN & PAN and GPS.

Other handheld devices include RFID (radio-frequency identification) readers, laser scanners and imagers, two-way radios, EWP1000 and EWP2000 semi-ruggedised business smartphones.

Supporting these are a slew of Motorola indoor wireless LAN switches, access points and client devices, as well as its outdoor wireless point-to-point wireless infrastructure devices such as the PTP600 wireless Ethernet bridge with data rates of 300 Mb/s, a range of up to 80 km and which is used in the backhaul to replacement for T1 or E1 lines.

Another is the PMP500 point-to-multipoint  wireless broadband access network platform with speeds of 30Mb/s at a range of over 6 km, whilst yet another is the IAP 4300 intelligent access point bridge between wired infrastructure and the wireless mesh network.