James Tenser

Home Depot Invests $60 Million in Handheld Devices

January 21, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Home Depot Inc. will hand over 10,000 portable devices to its store associates in 2010 to help them stock shelves, locate inventory, make telephone calls and check out customers throughout the store. What features on handheld devices will do the most to improve the customer experience?      [more...]

I'm a bit skeptical about this huge investment to support somewhat pedestrian capabilities. Helping shoppers locate desired items is good service to be sure, but what does "manage inventory" mean in the context of these $600 devices? And in-aisle cashiering is a nice-to-do, but how often is this likely to be of interest to the HD shopper?

The real customer service payback from equipping HD employees with mobile devices would come from maintaining optimal selling conditions at the shelf, especially item availability (aka "in-stock"). If these devices support a feedback process that supports store staff detecting and correcting shelf conditions, then we're talking innovation.

Handhelds and their associated network may also support some workforce and store execution management functions--pushing tasks out to the right people at the right time. Ideally this would include the myriad supplier reps who perform merchandising tasks inside HD stores.

With all this potential, deploying just five devices per store seems woefully inadequate, which implies to me that the unit cost is a huge limitation. Wouldn't it be wiser to use $99 iPhones with cheap apps and reach five times the users for the same capex?