Welcome to Home Home Depot
HomeHomeDepot is a free resource for home and home depot information world wide. Home and Home Depot updates information related to various news and articles. Home Home Deopt also offers comprehensive web directory for home related category listings.
Home Depot Article
|
Home Depot to Spend $60 Million on Handheld Devices (Update1)
Home Depot Inc. will make its biggest investment of 2010 in more than 10,000 portable devices that will help U.S. employees stock shelves, make telephone calls and check out customers anywhere in the store. Home Depot said the handheld gadgets will cost about $60 million. For the past decade, employees of the world’s largest home-improvement retailer have managed inventory using computers powered by motorboat batteries on rolling carts. “If you compare us to a world-class retailer, from a technology perspective, 1991 is kind of where we are pegged,” said Matt Carey, hired as Home Depot’s chief information officer in 2008 from EBay Inc. “This is the first big customer-service tool we’ve given our associates in a very long time.” Home Depot, based in Atlanta, says the devices will help it vault past the competition, including Lowe’s Cos., which has been using handheld wireless technology in its stores since 1995. Home Depot has trailed Lowe’s in comparable-store sales for the past nine years, spurring Frank Blake to order customer service improvements after he took charge as chairman and chief executive officer in 2007. In the past two quarters, Home Depot’s sales outperformed Lowe’s at stores open at least a year. Home Depot declined 18 cents to $27.98 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares climbed 26 percent in 2009. Lowe’s, based in Mooresville, North Carolina, dipped 6 cents to $23.33. The stock rose 8.7 percent last year. Fewer Reports Upgrading technology is part of Home Depot’s broader push of employees into selling. Workers who once counted cash at the end of the day now spend that time on the sales floor and let the banks alone count the money, Chief Financial Officer Carol Tome said in an interview. Employees also prepare fewer reports on store operations to drive back-office workers into the store to work with customers, she said. At least five of the handheld gadgets from Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola Inc. will be distributed to each of Home Depot’s 2,000 U.S. stores this year, starting in the quarter that begins Feb. 1, Carey, 45, said in an interview. In testing last year, the company found that employees spent less time tracking down merchandise, such as galvanized nails of a certain length, he said. The devices help provide the location of the item as well as the amount in stock or availability at another store. “With the way things are going in the economy, it’s better for a retailer to invest in a customer-facing technology than a back-end technology where they may not see a rate of return as quickly,” said Sahir Anand, research director for Boston-based consulting firm Aberdeen Group’s retail practice. Inventory Management The technology combines mobile-telephone calling, walkie- talkie communications among employees, and inventory management in a single device, Carey said. As a result, employees no longer need to carry phones and walkie-talkies or use the rolling computers, he said. By clicking an icon on the screen, Home Depot workers can tell customers when an out-of-stock item will be replenished. Or employees can use the device to call other Home Depot stores and ask them to hold merchandise, said Cara Kinzey, an information technology senior vice president at Home Depot. “It can also be a mobile cash register,” said Marvin Ellison, executive vice president of Home Depot’s U.S. stores. An attachment to the device processes credit and debit cards, allowing purchases to be made away from the checkout registers, similar to transactions at Apple Inc. stores, said Kinzey, 43. The handhelds will be Home Depot’s biggest capital expenditure this year, said Tome, 53. Home Depot plans to announce its 2010 capital spending plans on Feb. 23 when it reports fourth-quarter results. The company planned to spend about $1 billion in 2009. ‘Catching Up’ Lowe’s device is similar to Home Depot’s in helping workers track inventory and locate items on the shelf, said Maureen Rich, a spokeswoman for Lowe’s. Employees can use the gadget to start customers’ purchases throughout the store. Cashiers complete the transactions by typing in the shoppers’ phone numbers, Rich said. Lowe’s hasn’t adopted credit-card processing because of concerns over possible theft of information about transactions over the wireless network, Rich said. Home Depot fell behind Lowe’s, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. in technology over the past decade, Ellison, 44, said in an interview. “During that time period, our competitors got better at being a retailer,” he said. “Now we are catching up.” http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-12/ |
|