New NCR Power Picking Improves Efficiency of ‘Order Online, Pick-up In Store’ Offers

NCR Corporation announces the availability of NCR Power Picking, new store-based order fulfillment software that expands the omnicommerce portfolio of solutions and enhances the “order online, pick up in store” or “click-and-collect” experience. The software is designed to help store associates fill orders more quickly directly from the store shelf and improve order accuracy. NCR Power Picking helps retailers’ associates to shop for a customer order, leveraging store level inventory and importing the same decision-making preferences that the customer would otherwise make for themselves, such as perishability dates or the ripeness of produce, through e-commerce applications. The details of multiple orders are displayed simultaneously on a mobile tablet, which allows the store associate to pick multiple orders based on most efficient store movement, or waves.   The software optimizes process efficiencies and improves customer service by validating the quality and accuracy of every item in every order. According to recent studies, less than 25 percent of retail IT leaders believe they have highly functioning buy online/pick up in store systems. NCR Power Picking is part of the NCR Retail ONE open ecosystem of retail applications, making it easy to integrate with other relevant applications such as NCR Retail Online and other e-commerce systems, perpetual inventory management, POS and loyalty systems. This includes NCR solutions such as NCR Retail Online, NCR Power Inventory, NCR POS and Loyalty solutions as well as non-NCR applications and platforms. “While order-online/ pick-up in store is convenient for customers, executing on the promise of this shopping model can be challenging for retailers, as the complete ecosystem needed often crosses siloed components of their IT networks and business operations,” says Todd Michaud, vice president and general manager of Global Enterprise, Merchandising and Supply Chain, NCR Retail Solutions. “NCR Power Picking helps enable omnicommerce and when deployed with Retail ONE, retailers can deliver a seamless click-and-collect solution that improves efficiencies for retailers and shopping experiences for customers.” Most retailers that fulfill online orders in the store have associates print out the orders and walk the store to pick the items using paper and pencil, eliminating the opportunity to efficiently pick multiple orders and increasing the risk of order error, company officials say. In addition, orders are organized by online choices rather than store design, leaving associates responsible for meandering through the store and often searching multiple shelves for each item. NCR Power Picking directs the user to the exact location of each item within the order, using the most efficient route possible.  Items and quantities are confirmed using barcode scanning, and then items are placed into the appropriate tote or bag. Multiple orders can be selected at one time, which cuts down on travel time when volumes are high.  When the entire order has been selected, NCR Power Picking generates a “license plate” for each storage container associated with the order, so that the items are easy to find when the order is ready for pick-up or delivery. When integrated with NCR Power Inventory, as the associate selects items for an order, the inventory is put on-hold, thus taking the items out of the sellable inventory balance. Once the order is picked up or delivered to the customer, the inventory is moved from on-hold to a status of sold.  In the rare scenario that a customer fails to pick up their order, items can easily be scanned back into sellable inventory. This maintains accurate inventory visibility from both a quantitative and financial status across every step of the sale.