Grocery stores and supermarkets offer a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into specific departments. In order to meet the extreme high-volume transactional demands of these stores, retailers need a high performance and reliable bar code scanning solution that maximizes scanning productivity without sacrificing ergonomic benefits.

To achieve a high level of customer satisfaction, it is critical for supermarkets to maximize front-end throughput. Supermarkets are traditionally smaller than a hypermarket or mass merchandise store, yet still require a robust scanning solution for optimal cashier productivity.

	POS Checkout Grocery stores and supermarkets are typically characterized by a large number of checkout stations across the ‘front-end' of the store. These stores generally experience large volumes of customers each day with transactions that contain a high number of lower value items. Customers shop by placing their selected merchandise into shopping carts (trolleys) or baskets and unload the items onto a belt that brings the items to the cashier. Supermarkets checkout stations are designed for fast scanning. Cashiers receive the items at the end of the belt and slide the items across an in-counter bar code scanner in a seated or standing position. To meet their transaction demands, these stores generally use a bi-optic scanning solution with or without a scale platter, depending on whether the store sells weighed produce or not. A single plan scanner can also be used for stores with medium to low average transaction volumes. Almost all items are moved across the scanner, there are some exceptions for bulky or heavy items that may be scanned with an auxiliary handheld scanner, connected to the primary high performance (bi-optic) scanner.
	Loss Prevention - Reducing Produce Shrink / Loss To help combat produce shrink, Datalogic ADC offers the patented All-Weighs™ scale platter designed with joint horizontal and vertical scale platters to transfer the true weight of an item onto the scale only. This allows cashiers to weigh items naturally and eliminates inaccurate weighing due to poor product orientation. Datalogic's integrated Produce Rail™ or Produce Lift Bar also helps lift long or bulky produce from the surrounding counter, effectively keeping the item from touching non-weighing portions of the scale. The Produce Lift Bar also conveniently disappears when not in use.
	Loss Prevention – EAS Deactivation For high-priced or commonly shoplifted items, convenience stores can utilize Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) tags to prevent unnecessary shrink / loss; yet implementing these tags requires a solution for quick and easy tag deactivation. Datalogic ADC's bar code scanners are capable of supporting Sensormatic or Checkpoint tags. Deactivation occurs automatically when the item is passed over the scanner. Datalogic additionally prevents the tag from deactivating until there is a good-read from the bar code label, allowing for proper deactivation and only catching truly active tags at exit points.
	Loss Prevention - Reducing Bottom-of-Basket (BOB) Loss LaneHawk BOB, is an imaged-based scanning system that recognizes items on the bottom of the shopping cart without having to use a UPC code. When an item is detected and recognized, its UPC information is sent directly through an Ethernet connection to the POS. The cashier verifies the items and finalizes the transaction. LaneHawk BOB consists of an Intelligent Lighting Camera Unit (iLCU) for each lane along with a LaneHawk back-office server integrated with the store's POS controller. LaneHawk is reliable because the system is programmed to scan for specific items each retailer determines it should recognize and significantly reduces lost sales due to items on the bottom of the cart not being itemized in the transaction.
	Identity / Age Verification Grocery stores and supermarkets selling regulated goods such as alcohol, lottery tickets and tobacco must follow government requirements to verify a customer's age and identity. To comply with these laws, retailers typically instruct employees to inspect the customer's identification (ID) card. Datalogic offers Driver License Parsing capabilities to allow the cashier to automatically verify customer eligibility through a one-step process. By using this technology, retailers can reduce the chances of selling regulated goods to ineligible customers.
	Form Automation The extracted data from government issued ID cards can also be used to auto-populate customer application forms for credit cards, loyalty programs, product returns, licenses and more. By simplifying these applications, businesses can improve customer participation while adding the potential to capture additional customer data for marketing purposes. Capturing the customer's information at the source also ensures accurate records and the highest level of data integrity.
	Mobile Marketing At the forefront of consumer trends, grocery stores and supermarkets are already jumping into mobile marketing or the use of a mobile device (cell phone, PDA or smart phone) as a new means of marketing communication, promotion or advertising. This new form of marketing opens two-way communication channels for retailers to directly engage and build trusted relationships with customers faster, better and with fewer costs than ever before. In order to implement such programs, stores must be equipped with bar code scanners capable of reading directly from a mobile device's highly reflective screen. Imaging-based bar code scanners are required to read mobile bar codes with the best performance.
	Host Download Host Download is a valuable tool to simultaneously update all bar code scanners in a store system with the most current configuration settings. It also allows the configuration to be updated over time if the store settings changes. Datalogic ADC offers host download capabilities through the POS terminal, easily updating the scanner's application firmware, configuration settings or both. When updates are available, they are transmitted automatically through the terminal application software to the scanner.
	Cashier Training To improve employee training and productivity, bar code scanners need to as intuitive as possible. Datalogic's user-friendly features like FirstStrike™ advanced software decoding algorithms and SurroundScan™ 3D Scanning™ can help stores achieve simple, intuitive scanning. Datalogic has also created a cashier-training tool highlighting critical opportunities for cashiers improvement based on scanning data, such as a habit of lifting items across the scanner. Management can use the data to identify and solve these bad habits early on, giving many opportunities to minimizing cashier inefficiencies and the potential for injury.
	Diagnostic and Productivity Reporting Diagnostics Reporting reports the current health of each scanner to a storewide status monitoring system for an early warning of potential failures. Store management can use the information to schedule preventative or corrective maintenance at times that best suit the store, rather than risk experiencing potential down time during peak operating hours. Productivity Reporting is also a value added feature first for identifying specific labels that are consistently hard to read and second for identifying specific scanners performing at a lower than normal level. Store management can use this information to fix the labels and schedule cleaning or preventative maintenance before a failure occurs.
	Queue Busting The average person spends approximately one hour each day waiting in line, which equals about 2 to 3 years in a lifetime! To relieve this common customer frustration and lost profit from those who leave the store, Datalogic ADC's PreScan™ queue-busting software application is the answer. The PreScan queue-buster is a simple and cost-effective way for retailers to manage peak customer traffic by increasing customer throughput on existing lanes, while avoiding the need to add additional lanes. PreScan queue-busting also provides operators with a handheld solution to scan those bulky and heavy items that would not be placed on the counter, which is an important benefit for these stores. By performing the scanning and bagging portion of the transaction before the customer arrives to the POS, PreScan queue-busting customers will experience a dramatically reduced transaction time. This improves customer satisfaction, provides a more ‘personalized' shopping experience, and reduces the wait time for other customers in line. Additionally, the PreScan software's ‘plug and play' capabilities come without costly POS software modifications and can be configured in two different modes of operation (Single Lane or Multi-Lane) to benefit a wide range of front-end configurations and traffic flows.
	Self-Checkout and Personal Shopping Retailers operating high volume stores are evolving from the traditional cashier-assisted checkout lanes to offering their customers additional checkout options. These options include self-checkout systems of varying sizes and personal shopping. The shopper scanning and bagging their own items while the purchase is verified by a security system - usually weight enabled, characterizes self-checkout systems. The shopper then pays at the same device using cards or cash. The entire transaction is monitored by a semi-remote attendant who verifies security, payment, and age-verification when necessary and attends to any exception items or problems. Datalogic's ShopEvolution personal shopping solution and the Joya Self-Shopping Pod allows customers to use a store provided handheld terminal to scan items as they are placed in the shopping cart or trolley. The handheld device can provide additional information on the items as well as alerting the shopper to special discounts or product promotions. At the checkout, the shopper simply pays for the items scanned either at an attended pay station or at a self-service payment kiosk. Future developments will see further refinements on these self-service options as well as new technology aimed at further enhancing productivity at the high-volume retail checkout. Retailers are motivated to continue to improve front-end operational efficiencies and to provide additional customer service by offering the modern shopper with checkout options that match their personal preferences, transaction size, and desire for faster queues.
	Inventory Management Using mobile computers or bar code scanners, retailers can create a cost-saving inventory management system. By scanning each item's bar code label in the back room, in-store and at the checkout, businesses can automatically track items while updating inventory levels. This allows appropriate reorder points for optimal inventory practices to be set. Keeping an accurate and reliable inventory database also allows for better forecasting, reducing the chance of stock-outs, overstocks and emergency shipments.