Electronic Shelf Labels Are More Than Just Price Displays
One of the most important ESL use cases has nothing to do with price updates
Recap: Bluetooth® ESL Adoption is Growing Fast
As we've discussed here before, the market for Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) is growing fast, and Bluetooth is driving much of the adoption among retailers thanks to a standards-based approach and several cost advantages. Many of the companies we see exploring ESLs are retailers and grocers that are looking to implement a digital pricing strategy without locking themselves into a single vendor or single use case.
Recently, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) joined Rigado to discuss this retail transformation and share in-depth how ESL networks are being designed. We also did a live demo of ESLs in action, along with a unified IoT network that could only be built using this standards-based approach. You can watch the replay here, and while we talked mostly about ESL screen updates, we made mention of other use cases these ESLs are ideal for, including warehouse picking systems.
Pick-to-Light (PTL) Systems: Speed and Accuracy Using ESLs
Grocery delivery is a fast-growing market and will represent about 12% of all grocery sales by 2028. A key factor that will impact that growth is the speed and accuracy of the shoppers (or "pickers") fulfilling in-store orders. Typically, when you place an order, pickers hunt around the store looking for items, realizing what items are out of stock, finding replacements, etc. Some solution providers and grocers (if they have their own service) have improved the experience by supplying the pickers with location information in their mobile app, and letting the customer know ahead of time what items are stocked out.
Still, one of the biggest issues facing online grocery delivery is the time spent searching for items. This is where electronic shelf labels come in. Every ESL has an LED that can be programmed to blink on demand, and the newer generations support different colors. With the right software integration, each picker can be assigned a color for the order they are working on, and the LEDs are activated to help them find the item they are looking for faster. Instead of scanning the shelves looking for the correct item, they just need to get close enough to see a blinking light. Greater precision also means fewer incorrect items added to the cart.
These systems are often referred to as pick-by-light or pick-to-light, and have been standard in warehouses and fulfillment centers for years. Now with programmable ESLs hitting retail grocery stores, the same method can be used for online grocery fulfillment. But as is often the case, a leap forward in efficiency is not without technical challenges.
Bluetooth Offers PTL Scale in Any Environment
There are a few issues that PTL deployments may encounter. Updating prices on electronic shelf labels once or twice a week during off-hours may not require persistent connections and real-time responses from end devices, but constantly changing the LED status throughout the day as online grocery pickers shop in the store does. Proprietary systems address this by installing more infrastructure to control the ESLs, but that comes at a higher installation and support cost.
The Bluetooth 5.4 standard accounts for this scale challenge with Periodic Advertising with Response (PAwR). PAwR was designed with devices like ESLs in mind. It provides the effect of an always-connected device without reducing battery life, and makes it easier to scale to thousands of ESLs per gateway or access point. Furthermore, PAwR is tunable to the environment, so depending on the number of ESLs, latency requirements, and supporting infrastructure, variables like the periodic advertising interval can be adjusted to maximize performance for that individual location.
Integrating with PTL Applications
Another challenge to consider is that unlike price updates which are controlled by the retailer, in a pick-to-light system it may be a 3rd party online delivery company that wants to control the ESL. In this case, the delivery company needs access to the ESL and have the ability to control the LED status and color, while the retailer wants guardrails to avoid unintentional changes to the device.
This is much easier to accomplish with a Bluetooth ESL because the method of retrieving and controlling the status and color of the ESL is defined in the standard. This means API calls from 3rd parties can be built and supported more consistently than a proprietary system, and they can be limited to just the LED behavior and not other sensitive parameters such as pricing.
Bluetooth® ESLs: More Use Cases, Optimized Cost
More retailers are seeing the benefits of transitioning towards a standards-based approach for their next-generation shelf labels. Deployment cost is a key driver, as is the flexibility to add other IoT use cases to the ESL network. But expanding the use cases for the ESLs themselves, in this case pick-to-light, makes the case for Bluetooth even stronger. As omni-channel grocery and retail continues to expand, retailers will benefit from the Bluetooth approach to supporting these use cases.
To learn more about Rigado's role in ESLs, download our electronic shelf label solution brief and visit rigado.com/retail.
About Rigado
Rigado is leading the retail IoT transformation with unified networks that run on IoT Gateways, Wi-Fi Access Points, telematics equipment, and more. Contact us today to learn how you can lower your cost to develop and deploy a unified sensor network using existing infrastructure in any enterprise environment.