The retail sector has long been a digital innovation leader, but Covid-era restrictions changed customer preferences faster than any time in history. Curbside pickup, online ordering, and same-day delivery services exploded in popularity during social distancing. While the pandemic is largely behind us, consumers have grown accustomed to these services, and whole industries have developed to serve their needs. For retailers, however, these changing preferences present a significant challenge.
In this difficult economic environment, order fulfillment services add cost and complexity to retailers. These services are also labor intensive, which is further complicated by a tight labor market. The customer alternatives, such as DoorDash and Instacart, only dilute loyalty and shrinking retailer margins. The latest Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge is built to help solve these customer challenges and provide a path for all retailers to modernize their inventory management and fast track their order fulfillment plans. Easily retrofitted into existing warehouse and retail spaces, this solution scales with customer readiness, from software-only deployments to full, robotic-assisted automated micro-fulfillment centers. The Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge with inVia provides the path for modern order fulfillment based on Dell edge computing platforms to help retailers meet customer expectations with increased efficiency.
inVia Robotics is the latest in our portfolio of retail solutions that help customers modernize their warehouse operations and drive efficient order fulfillment. This solution achieves this by reducing one of the biggest costs and productivity inhibitors in order fulfillment: steps. inVia PickMate enables increased unit pick speeds by providing intelligent pathing to workers and clear guidance on packing goods. Order fulfillment productivity is further enabled by robotics, which automate significant walk times and bring goods to workers to finalize customer orders. inVia software and robotics have been shown to improve order fulfillment productivity by up to five times.