How Frontline Devices Power Customer-Centric Store Experiences Without Breaking the Bank

From personalization to instantaneous fulfillment, today’s most successful retailers are turning to frontline devices and secure IT communications networks to help super-charge consumers’ sky-high expectations. The merchants that are ruling CX have learned that solving one challenge at a time simply won’t cut it anymore — in order to thrive, sellers’ operations must work together holistically. Learn more about the store strategies today’s successful sellers are getting right, including how to leverage data from edge devices, the benefits of sharing operational insight to frontline workers, and how to evolve associates into brand ambassadors — all while keeping costs in line. Tim Denman: Welcome everyone, to the “Reimagining the In-Store Experience with the Customer at the Center” webinar, which is hosted by RIS, and presented by Zebra and Aruba. I'm Tim Denman, editor in chief of RIS and CGT. Thank you for joining us today. Today's heightened shopper expectations for personalized service and near-instantaneous fulfillment have forever altered the retail experience and the back-end operations that support it. Savvy merchants, warehouse operators, and fulfillment centers are increasingly turning to integrated digital solutions to meet these customer-centric needs, while simultaneously keeping costs in line. Today, we'll explore how frontline devices and secure IT communication networks can enhance the shopper experience, support better omnichannel fulfillment, and reduce operational costs. With us today are Tim Vanevenhoven of Aruba and Bill Inzeo of Zebra Technologies. Tim and Bill, thanks for joining us today. Let’s take a few minutes for each of you to introduce yourselves and your roles at your respective companies. Tim Vanevenhoven: Thanks for having me. I’m Tim Vanevenhoven, I work for Aruba, a part of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I’m responsible for strategic retail partnerships, so I work with the retail partners that we have in the ecosystem – their devices are connected to the Aruba infrastructure – in order to provide these experiences in-store. Aruba is a leader in wired and wireless infrastructure software, defined networking, and security solutions. We have retail customers all over the world using our technology to connect their staff, associates, and guests that come into the retail space. Thanks again for having us. Bill Inzeo: Tim, thanks for having me as well. I'm Bill Inzeo with Zebra Technologies. In my role at Zebra, I'm responsible for overseeing the global retail technology strategy – looking at the challenges and problems that our retail customers are facing and trying to solve with technology, then identifying where within our portfolio at Zebra, we have solutions that can help, or where there are areas for expanded development or investment for us to bring new solutions forward. At Zebra, we serve a variety of verticals and customers. My focus is on retail. Zebra is both a hardware and software solution provider. The hardware includes printers, scanners, mobile computers, etc., that you see in the retail environment. Then the portfolio of software and automation solutions that we bring forward helps the retailers drive new efficiencies and optimizations into their operations. Denman: Great. Before we jump into the panel discussion, each topic we'll be discussing will have corresponding stats from RIS’ Benchmark Research that we've conducted throughout the year. As an example, retailers report that despite the sharp rise in e-commerce sales over the past two years, nearly three-quarters of purchases are still conducted at the store level. To connect with these primary physical shoppers, 64% of retailers have placed personalizing the shopping experience, both in store, and out, as a top priority. Bill, we all know the in-store experience is rapidly changing. What are your thoughts on the current state of physical retail? And how can retailers provide the kind of memorable, engaging experience that customers demand? Inzeo: It's an understatement to say that this is a time of accelerated evolution in physical retail. There's no question that what's been going on with all of us in the pandemic over the last 18 months has changed our lives in a very personal way. It's also been highly impactful to the retail business. It has allowed the retailers to reconsider some of how they are showing up in their in-store experience for their customers. That's both with how they interact with customers and solutions they can deploy for that purpose, but also how they can take efficiencies, find them within their operation, and leverage technology to accomplish it, as well. If we start with the in-store customer experience, the term I hear most often from retail customers is mass personalization. How can we take this huge pool of customers that the retailers are serving, and be able to speak to them and communicate with them in a meaningful way, both before they come to the physical location for a shopping experience, but also, while they're in the four walls of the retailer's physical location? Taking technology and identifying places within that operation that they can communicate with those customers and get more interconnectivity with them is something that's continuing to be prioritized. Finding ways to leverage, whether it be kiosks or other communication devices to speak to those customers in the moment, including through mobile devices, is continually becoming more important. In addition, when looking at the actual in-store operations today, while the customers are certainly coming into the store and shopping, the increase in online shopping that retailers have seen over the past 18 months or so – especially the new options for customers in how they can acquire what they've ordered – has introduced a new level of complexity into the retail operation. With that complexity comes incremental costs, opportunities, or risks for there to be an interaction with a customer that is less than the customer's expectation. The retailers are looking to technology, whether it be hardware technology, like mobility devices that allow them to get connectivity and visibility to their associates, but also better visibility to their significant investment in inventory itself and in their store. This allows them to have constant visibility into that inventory, but also to use that visibility to improve accuracy within the brick-and-mortar retail location itself – that’s what's really going to drive whether or not they're successful with the customers that they're serving. Technology is going to become key for them. Vanevenhoven: I'd agree with Bill. From our point of view, retail customers are all in various stages of the digital transformation journey – I always refer to it as a journey, it's not a destination. Some people are earlier in their journey, others are in the middle, and others are further along. These in-store experiences are adding all sorts of new requirements. Think of the scenario where I go pick up my groceries and they're delivered to me in my car, while I wait in the parking lot. The requirements on that, the guest associate who's carrying a mobile device, to be able to have seamless connectivity when they're able to come out to fulfill my order and put the order in my car – that's a whole new class of requirements in that area. Then as Bill mentioned, the personalization. I walk into a retail store and I want to have good connectivity so that my mobile phone can use the store loyalty app, or I can check my email or check the news. Being able to have that connectivity in-store, and then use that data and analytics to feed into the retailer so that the retailer has a better understanding of what people are doing in their space, as well as who's coming into their space. That is what can allow a piece of that personalization, through a mobile app or connectivity, and better understand what customers are doing. Denman: Obviously, technology is playing a pivotal role in all of these experiences we talked about, and IT budgets are increasing to ensure stores have the firepower they need to provide these differentiated experiences. Bill and Tim, you touched on this a little bit already, but can you elaborate on technology's growing role in the store experience? Inzeo: I referred to this a bit in my last answer and Tim built on it as well. Where we're starting to see technology play an important role is in the ability to drive automation and optimization into some of the costly day-to-day tasks in retail. Inventory management is a great example, there’s a significant amount of labor that's allocated to counting inventory on a regular basis to ensure that the accuracy is as good as it can be. However, it requires people to constantly interact with that inventory and make updates to systems with devices, such as handheld mobile devices. What we're starting to see is that retailers are looking to other solutions that can leverage capabilities, such as RFID or computer vision, to create an automated visibility of inventory. This eliminates the need for the people-focused tasks in operation today and takes the labor that’s been allocated to inventory management and reallocate it. That may be allocated toward customer interaction, higher value interactions with the customers, within the environment, or to some of the online fulfillment that is seeing new levels of interest from the customers. The new complexities – in-store pickup, curbside pickup, etc. – is trying to find new ways to take the labor that they have freed up through automation, and apply it to those use cases. Additionally, think about the associates and how they can drive associate enablement. The ability to have communication and collaboration amongst associates has become increasingly important. Communication is always an important part of any business and certainly an important part of customer interaction. For retailers to be able to optimize how associates interact with one another, help each other or help customers, and be able to leverage technology to remove the need to physically travel through the retail environment to find one another, ask questions or for help – we're seeing that continue to get more and more focus. That's going to continue because the efficiency that is seen, and relying on a technology solution for that particular use case is material. They can take the time that they're saving and reallocate that time to even higher value tasks or processes that need to be done, which are aligned to the new type of business they're working in, or new strategies to deploy programmatically in the business. Vanevenhoven: I'm seeing the convergence in this technology also. In the past, there was a separate, isolated network using some proprietary capability for staff members to communicate with each other and then a staff member would carry a separate device that would enable inventory tracking, and then there was a separate network for security cameras, or a separate network in order to do some sort of analytics. Really, the way things are going, this is all consolidating and converging. The most successful retailers are the ones that have realized that it's not about just solving one point solution at a time, and trying to pick one problem and solve it. They need to step back and look at it holistically. Once you step back and look at it holistically, you have to walk before you can run, and there needs to be an order in solving these. My point is not to solve these in isolation. The devices that the associates carry are a perfect example. Now, these devices serve as voice communication, texting communication, access to inventory – all these things are starting to converge. The security cameras that are on the network are now being used for additional retail analytics, not only loss prevention. It's been a really interesting time, seeing the evolution as these technologies are converging. Inzeo: That's a really good point, just a quick build on that. What we're seeing the customers identify are the opportunities to combine additional use cases with a particular solution that allows them to build a stronger investment case for themselves, to solve more than one problem at a time. We're going to continue to see that level of adoption and that kind of thinking evolve as they start to leverage the different technology solutions that they're looking at right now. Denman: We're talking about retail tech, and it comes down to the real world examples. Retailers want to know how they can leverage these new technologies to improve their businesses, and ultimately, their bottom line. Now, let's discuss some specific retail use cases for the technology we've been discussing. Vanevenhoven: We touched on some of these with voice communication over Wi-Fi, instead of having that separate network where maybe a staff member was carrying around a walkie talkie and that was the way they were communicating. That is definitely a huge, prevalent, very specific use case to enable store associates to communicate with each other. Now we're seeing some really interesting innovations, in terms of that, on the infrastructure side. Being able to provide this location context indoors, where GPS isn't working, to be able to provide the associate device with the location context of where they are in the store, is starting to open up a new category of use cases. Having the geo information when someone does a barcode scan, or to know where all the associates are, to do time and motion studies for optimization. There's a ton of new use cases that are starting to show up on that side. Other items, like being able to use the network for analytics. For instance, understanding and creating heat maps for where people are within the store to better understand shopper behavior, and things like that. During our partnership with Zebra we've done some innovative work to help the IT teams, in the sense that we have now with an integration that Aruba and Zebra have, we're able to, if there is a roaming failure on a device, or if there's a poor voice quality call on the device, that data is all going through the network, and is available to the IT team, in an easy to understand way. Now think of a scenario where the IT team has visibility, they could be working from home, they have visibility into stores, potentially across the country, and being able to understand the performance of their network at the application level. What is the associate experience? How are these different applications performing in the palm of the hand of the associate? This is a unique capability that we brought to market thinking customers will be adopting in the near future here. Inzeo: To build on that, the visibility to the associates through locationing, and then seeing the leveraging of existing data, whether it be coming from inventory systems, point of sale systems, or both. Using that data to be able to conduct the analytic side, to identify signs of areas for improvement, execution breakdowns, issues that are happening within the environment, signals that there is a problem to be solved, or at least to be investigated, and possibly resolved. Beyond that, I spent time talking about the inventory tasks and inventory management tasks associated with just making sure you have the right stuff in the store for the customer. There's an equally important, and frankly, costly investment that's made when it comes to pricing and promotions. I think within that in-store environment retailers are starting to look at solutions like electronic shelf labels, that are allowing them to automate their price changes that they're conducting, if they're doing them manually today, in a manual way, with people changing the prices, or the promotional tags. They're seeing the advantage of the connectivity of having digital price labels that are connected to a centralized source, which helps to keep things consistent. The automation of those price change tasks is a significant opportunity to reallocate labor to higher value work, which can be done in the environment, interacting with customers, and otherwise. Electronic shelf labels are a good example of solutions that are adding in use cases that allow them additional capabilities – like in-store, online order fulfillment – where the labels themselves will signal the associate that's picking the order that this is the next item on the list. How can they drive efficiency into that part of the operation as well? They're leveraging computer vision, most often the modality of shelf edge cameras, to interact with the shelf labels. Those labels know which product they're assigned to and look for things like out-of-stocks. By leveraging computer vision and being able to identify, at an item level, which products are out-of-stock, the associates can take action on those products if they have stock in the back room and use it to fill the shelf. Those kinds of solutions are really starting to show up in store. Then, we touched on communication and collaboration earlier. We're starting to see some incorporation of workflows into that type of a technology as well, where an audio alert can be leveraged, versus something that shows up on a list or on a computer screen somewhere. This alert will signal to associates when something needs to be done, for example a customer has shown up in-store to pick up an online order. This drives better speed and efficiency into that process and also meets the customer expectation, which is, "I'm here for my order, and I'd like to pick that up quickly." It allows for continual optimization in the main areas of the business – inventory, pricing, promotions, customer interactions – it's across the board. Vanevenhoven: Bill's example, the electronic shelf labels, are the perfect example of this convergence. It's very possible to deploy an electronic shelf label solution across an entire store. It uses a proprietary interface, which allows you to deploy a separate wireless network to deploy the entire electronic shelf label solution. When you think about this, though, and scale it to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of stores, it creates cost and security challenges. That's why we're now seeing retailers deploy these electronic shelf labels, but doing it over the already existing infrastructure. It's these integrations that allow use cases to be deployed on existing networks rather than asking the IT teams or in-store teams to add an additional network, and all the costs and complexity of that. Electronic shelf labels are a perfect example with this convergence that customers are going towards. Denman: I'm going to shift gears just for a second and talk a little bit about the other side of the coin, here in retail. Obviously, steadily rising e-com levels, omnichannel fulfillment, has made the supply chain more important than ever. A huge focus over the past year or two has been improving supply chain operations and we're seeing retailers investing heavily in the supply chain, the warehouse, and more specifically on increasing fulfillment speeds. Can you talk a little bit about some of the use cases for the technology you've been discussing at the DC and fulfillment center levels? Vanevenhoven: Sure, the use cases are slightly different at this type of fulfillment center, in that the spaces are much larger, which changes some of the networking and wireless requirements. With the advent of Wi-Fi 6, the latest version of the Wi-Fi standard (also called 802.11ax), there are some new capabilities in terms of providing quality of service to this type of application. We do have a number of customers outfitting fulfillment centers with the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology to be able to connect all these devices in those use cases. There also are some emerging technologies, such as CBRS private spectrum, that's been allocated within the United States. Anyone is able to use it without having to pay for a specific license like carriers have in the past. It's in the 3.5 gigahertz range, and now any retailer (with some restrictions) can use it as long as there’s not someone else around, for example military and some others get first dibs on the spectrum. This is a new spectrum at 3.5 gigahertz that people now have access to use, and one of the nice things about it is that it can transmit further and with more power than Wi-Fi. Think of a large distribution center, there is a very large space to cover. By leveraging the CBRS technology, you're able to get that connectivity with fewer transmission points or fewer access points. Customers are now doing a mix of Wi-Fi and CBRS technologies in distribution centers to be able to take the best of both technologies and apply them where they see fit. Inzeo: I’d just add, if you think about what a use case or a real-life example looks like in a warehouse environment, builders take that into consideration. Look no further than automated robotics. There is a huge opportunity to take that significant amount of square footage they're operating within – without a solution is like an automated robotic solution – employees are required to do quite a bit of physical movement throughout that environment, which is a lot of time spent on their feet moving around. Being able to augment what they're already doing with an automated solution like robotics is bringing the speed that they're after when it comes to fulfillment processes today. It also allows them to bring in a different level of accuracy, which is helpful because it always comes back to: how can we meet the customer's demand as fast as we can, but also as accurately as possible so that we deliver exactly what they expect in the amount of time that they expect it. Having capabilities, such as Wi-Fi 6 and CBRS is just another opportunity to be able to augment what they've already put in place within the infrastructure to account for security requirements and continue to expand with each type of technology investment. They’re able to do so in a way that allows for that next level of technology that might require more speed or bandwidth then they had previously. They get the best of both worlds from an infrastructure perspective, but then also, because they have that opportunity or option, they are able to light up these use cases and applications within the actual environment itself. Vanevenhoven: In those AGVs it's not one size fits all. For some of those AGVs, Wi-Fi is the right solution to control them or have them be autonomous. In other cases, depending on how fast they're going, sometimes CBRS is the right choice. That's why it takes some due diligence, as you're building out these use cases and depending on your fulfillment center, to understand what the requirements are on the infrastructure to deliver the use cases that you need to deliver. Inzeo: It's like a network and infrastructure buffet. Vanevenhoven: That's really what it's turning into. In stores there’s Bluetooth, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, cellular, CBRS, and 5G – it really is a buffet. There’s all these different tools that we've never had in the toolbox and it's choosing the right tool. Just because you have a hammer, doesn’t mean everything should be a nail. It’s very similar to the various wireless technologies today. Denman: With all these different wireless technology options, in addition to the standard tech stack that the retailers are dealing with, security is becoming more of a concern. The bad guys aren't slowing down. The good guys need to continue security efforts just to keep pace. Can we talk a little bit about how retailers can secure the enterprise and make sure data is safe both in-store, in the warehouse, and ultimately in headquarters as well? Vanevenhoven: This is a big topic for our customers. Historically, retailers and other verticals always had this castle and moat idea. If you think back to what it's referencing, everyone inside the castle is safe and trusted, then you build a moat around your castle and everyone outside the castle is not safe and is not trusted. A number of retailers looked at cyber security that way for a very long time. We're in a transition period now, where that model does not apply. There are workers who are working from home, they're outside the office, but they are still trusted. There might be a point-of-sale device or security camera in your store that has been compromised with malware, and just because it's in the store, doesn't mean that it's safe and trusted. Moving away from this castle and moat idea to what the industry is calling “zero trust” and having a zero-trust security methodology. That's what retailers are moving to today. The concept of zero trust is that you need to identify everything that's on the network and give it a role. Then, if it does anything, it misbehaves or needs to be continuously validated, it is continuous to stay secure. A quick example of that is: I'm working remotely, log in with my credentials, and I've been a trusted employee for years. Then, all of a sudden, my password gets stolen, and now my account is no longer trustworthy. Think of a security camera that's been in the store for multiple years, all of a sudden, it starts to do a web access or access something outside the security server, now that security device inside the store has been compromised. It's the idea of identifying everything on the network, setting up policies, and using what's called segmentation so that the point-of-sale machine that's handling credit card information is only able to talk to the necessary part of the network that it needs. A security camera is identified as a security camera and can only talk to the security server. There's no reason why the security cameras should be accessing the records database for employees or any HR systems. By having a strategy with micro-segmentations, when a device starts to misbehave, not only are you preventing it, but you can quickly isolate the fact that the device has been compromised and is behaving in a way different than before. That's the only way, going forward, to try to slow down the bad guys. Zero trust is the security approach that we see customers adopting and using going forward. Inzeo: Everything that we've been describing in our use cases, admittedly, is all about connectivity. Everything, all these different types of technology, is about visibility, connectivity, and harnessing that for efficiency. All of those notions from a business perspective are great, but exactly to your point, with each of those points of connectivity comes a responsibility for security. That's definitely top of mind for the retailers. As long as the strategy for implementation, the process that it follows, and the appropriate rigor applied is continuously followed, then that zero trust methodology becomes applicable to each point of connectivity that they're looking at. It solves the business problem, but also meets the responsibility from a security perspective to ensure the right amount of monitoring and preventative measures are in place to prevent a device from being compromised, or doing something other than its intent. It's an area that's evolving out of necessity, but it's an area that is going to continue to be a top focus for retail customers as they continue to look to new types of technology and connectivity in their environment. Vanevenhoven: Everyone knows, it's not just the cost of the breach, it's the brand reputation. No one wants to be in the news. There's just so many components of this, and it’s definitely crucial to preserve the brand. Denman: Bill and Tim, before we transition to the open questions, any final thoughts on this phase to wrap up the presentation? Inzeo: My final takeaway would be this: it's an exciting and amazing time in retail today. The types of challenges that are being faced are at a level that have not been seen before and the speed at which change and new types of thinking is necessary is also unprecedented. We're seeing a focus on three key areas where technology is seen as a key enabler to meet the accelerating pace of customer demand: 1. How the inventory that they've invested in for those customers is optimized. 2. How to drive a smarter operation through enabling associates. 3. Driving new levels of connectivity to deliver that next-level customer experience, which has become the expectation of customers. It's not just a singular expectation. We’ve discussed through this webinar that there are a variety of different solutions that are going to be the “right” solution for the problem, but it's not one size fits all. Having the ability to choose from a variety of appropriate options for both the customers and the environment is continuing to become very important. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the choices they're making today will help enable operations as they exist today, but also what the next three to five years is going to look like. If we judge how different the world looks and life is now compared to 18 months ago, imagine what another 18 months or three years is going to look like. It's an exciting time. Vanevenhoven: For me, on the digital transformation journey people need to look at the problems holistically, not just in terms of point solutions, as well as look at things in a future-proof way, and how IoT can be used. For instance, if you have temperature monitoring tags in refrigeration systems or in cold chain, they can help to understand where the assets are, the temperature of the assets – everything from water leak detection, a slip and fall incident, predictive maintenance, better understanding the air conditioning system, and even when the ball bearings need to be replaced before there's a catastrophic failure, pumps, and motors. With the advent of IoT, there's many use cases and they keep coming. Startup companies are inventing new IoT sensors that solve new problems. The savvy retailer has an infrastructure in place that they can add to, and they've built a future-proof environment to add new use cases as they evolve. Last year with contact tracing and social distancing, tons of new solutions came to the market. Some retailers had an infrastructure where they were able to add that on top, others weren't able to because they were locked in with their current infrastructure. Being able to think forward in terms of having a future-proof solution, one size doesn't fit all, and there are a number of different technologies. Then, security must be top of mind to ensure the solution being implemented in the store – and as you're adding new use cases – to make sure security isn't forgotten. Denman: That's a great summation. We’ll start with the first question here. You mentioned indoor location. Can you expand a little more on what Aruba, and Zebra are doing today in that area? Vanevenhoven: Everyone thinks of GPS as the location standard, however, inside of a store or a multi-level retail scenario, the GPS isn't reliable. Over the past few years, Bluetooth has emerged as a way to get that location context using Bluetooth beacons, other Bluetooth tags, or Bluetooth capabilities. Aruba and Zebra have done a number of integrations. Every Aruba access point has a Bluetooth radio, and most Zebra devices have it as well. We’ve done a lot of integration so that the capability between the Bluetooth-capable access point and Zebra device can provide that location context. That's been the de facto standard, and that's what a number of customers are using today. It allows that location context that we talked about. There are some exciting capabilities on the market, where historically Wi-Fi locationing didn't have as good of a reputation as Bluetooth locationing because Bluetooth was more accurate. There are new standards, one being 802.11mc, which uses a concept called round trip time. Instead of trying to estimate a location between the infrastructure and a device using what was known as received signal strength, we're actually able to use how long it takes for a packet to get from the Zebra device to the infrastructure and back. With this new technology we're able to get a much more accurate location without having to have any battery-powered beacons or additional infrastructure. Aruba and Zebra were the first to the market with the enterprise deployment of this solution and now have customers who are starting to adopt it. Today, Bluetooth is the de facto location standard. My prediction is that over the next couple of years, using this built-in capability within Wi-Fi will become the new location standard for indoor location context. Denman: Next question here, what do you think about store-provided personal shopping devices? Inzeo: We’re certainly seeing the relevance of this grow. Think about the two primary drivers of customer adoption of those personal shopping devices. One has been for quite some time, just the desired shopping experience that that customer wants to have. I'd be an example of a shopper who prefers to be able to go around, scan the products myself, and check myself out. That was mostly a personal choice that was being made. More recently, we see that adoption has increased, accelerated like many things. The driving reason for that is the personal safety element to it, which has been introduced over the past 18 months or so. In some cases, the customer's primary driver, a reason for that shopping experience, is because they now prefer an unassisted checkout experience or shopping experience. It allows the retailers to be able to meet that new demand or desire for that shopping experience, while also still being able to deliver on it for the customers that have always preferred that as a shopping experience. We predict that we'll continue to see the increased adoption from the past 18 months, and expect that to continue to grow for those reasons. Then, if we think about that solution in particular, there's another level of visibility that is available to the retailers in terms of location because they have devices that are moving around their environment. They can leverage that insight to identify how to better serve customers and where they may or may not be meeting the expectation of the customer. Based on the new visibility and insights that they get from that locationing, that offers a solution that can leverage the infrastructure to be able to provide a view that they didn't have before, and apply that to the new customer expectations they're all racing to meet as best they can. Denman: This next question here is, what do you see as the biggest game changer for retail IT teams, as we head into 2022? Vanevenhoven: We've done some work with Zebra, and I mentioned it earlier, but having the ability for the infrastructure to understand the experience that's in the palm of the associate's hand. Previously, it was two isolated worlds. The IT team would say, “well, the network's up and running,” and then someone will say, "but the devices aren't able to connect, or the Wi-Fi is down." It was a bit of a finger pointing exercise. It was hard, very often, to know where the real problem was. The work that we've done and the capabilities that Zebra has enabled with their devices, provides detailed visibility that other devices haven't been able to provide. Then, combining that with the visibility on the network side, the ability to have each Zebra device in the store be a sensor, or be the eyes and ears of the IT team – that is going to be a game changer. I touched on this earlier: the scenario where the corporate IT team is working from home and has visibility into the applications running on these Zebra devices. They can see how the devices are performing across the entire country, and if there is an issue, be able to do a packet capture on that Zebra device. The IT team can investigate, without having to drive to the store, to figure out why call quality was poor on the third floor of the retail store, or if a roaming failure happened. From an IT perspective, using the data to give insights, and enabling the staff members and customers to have the best possible experience, is game changer that's cutting-edge technology now. Over the next few years it is definitely going to go mainstream. Inzeo: The only thing I'd add to that, and we touched on this earlier, you add in the fact that new capabilities like 5G, CBRS, and Wi-Fi 6 are now available. No longer is the pipe coming out of the retail environment the limitation. You can do everything that Tim was just describing, and I fully agree that's huge. It also allows them the bandwidth they need to light up these other new capabilities – it's a great solution, certainly. It’s an interesting time for retailers because there are limitations, or roadblocks, that were in place before that are starting to be removed. Denman: We got a nice question from the audience here that stores are starting to use legacy video systems with AI to monitor theft, traffic flow, and other things. Do you see this becoming more widespread, and part of your holistic strategies for the internet of things? Vanevenhoven: The answer is yes, there's a couple of different ways this is being approached. You can use legacy video systems, that could be an old analog camera they want to connect to the network, even though it's an older analog camera, the technology now allows you to do image processing on analog signals and do different use cases, like theft detection and traffic flow. Even with an older camera, the technology now allows those use cases to do analytics on that. A customer doesn't have to do a full rip-and-replace in order to get some of those benefits. Now, if a customer is adding or upgrading the camera system, the newest cameras on the market have an incredible amount of edge processing capability. In the camera, you can do a lot of this detection now, for heat mapping and understanding analytics. If that's happening at the edge in the camera, then the camera is smarter and you don't have to stream all the data somewhere else to have it processed. You can greatly reduce the bandwidth requirements on the store by only sending the interesting data. If there's nothing happening in the frame, then there's no need to send all that data. If you have a newer camera, then it’s doing that edge processing to send the analytics. This is a great question, and it's one of those scenarios where you can't just do a complete overhaul rip-and-replace of an entire camera system in one go. That's why this idea of using the older cameras until you replace the newer cameras works. That's what I'm seeing in our customer base. Inzeo: It's a great example of leveraging a prior investment and optimizing it with a capability on top of that investment, then taking a new use case and applying that to the technology. It ties into some of the value of use cases that we mentioned earlier in today's chat, and I'm certainly seeing that as well. It's not only in assisted checkout scenarios, but there's been an increase in adoption of self-checkout scenarios, as well. This type of capability is helpful, not only for theft, but really there's a significant amount of unintended missed scanning happening in those checkout scenarios. There isn't malicious intent, it's just mistakes being made, whether it's by associates or customers themselves while they're checking out. The ability to find that in the moment and interrupt with some messaging to correct before the transaction ends and the loss occurs – that’s a significant opportunity. Not only from a loss reduction, loss prevention perspective, but it's an opportunity to leverage an existing investment for that type of a use case. Also, in the question it was mentioned, traffic flow, customer movement, those types of use cases, as well. I totally agree with Tim, I see the same thing. Denman: Great questions, and great answers. I want to thank Tim, and Bill for joining us. Thank everyone for listening, and of course, thanks Zebra and Aruba for their support. Until next time, stay safe out there.

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