4 Key Zebra Technologies to Help Automate Your Small Business

If you’re managing or tracking inventory, assets or processes in your business, you’re probably no stranger to data capture technologies such as barcode scanners. But what you might not fully realize is that barcode scanners aren’t just scanners these days: they’re sophisticated imagers with advanced capabilities to capture far more than just barcodes.

For example, Zebra barcode imagers are able to automatically capture alphanumerical ID numbers, such as serial numbers and direct part marks, and they can recognize optical characters, so they can capture and convert text information and instantly get it into your systems.

Zebra imagers are also able to capture data from form fields on documents such as shipping documents and bills of lading. This way, you can capture information and get it into your systems automatically and digitally, without dealing with as many paper forms or having to manually re-enter data and information.

This helps save time and labour in many different processes, and it allows you to enable end-to-end traceability, better inventory visibility  and more efficient processes – with far less manual labour, errors and cost.

Zebra RFID, or radio frequency identification, is a wireless technology that works much like Wi-Fi, using radio signals to capture and transmit information. Instead of scanning barcodes to capture IDs, track inventory or trace what’s moving through your processes, RFID allows you to identify, track and locate items remotely and wirelessly, which is something that barcoding can’t do.

With Zebra RFID, you can easily detect, track and update the status and location of virtually any item, pallet, bin or asset. Since it works wirelessly and remotely, using radio waves, there is no need for line-of-sight access to a barcode. You can also identify and track up to hundreds of items with a single read. So, this makes RFID a vastly more efficient tracking and locating technology, and, since it doesn’t rely on manual scans, there is less chance of error.

All you have to do is print and encode an RFID tag, apply it to an item and then use an RFID reader to read it. The tag is a small label that contains a microchip for identification and tiny microtransmitters for communicating with the RFID reader. When the tag is within range of the reader, it can be uniquely identified, tracked and its location determined to within an accuracy of a few feet, depending on the type of tag and RFID technology you’re using.

In most small and medium-sized businesses, passive RFID systems are used, where handheld readers or fixed-position readers send out a signal, and the energy contained in the radio waves actually wakes up and powers the tag, so it can transmit its information to your readers. With active RFID systems, tags can be printed with their own micro-batteries on board, so tags can power themselves up at regular intervals and send signals and information to nearby readers.

In either case, you can use this system to largely automate your data capture, tracking and locating, and your readers can communicate with your networks and systems to get the data and updates in your systems and databases automatically.

In a small-business automation context, artificial intelligence can be an extremely useful tool. A good case in point is the use of AI and machine learning in software applications, to help companies analyze their business data and trends, identify issues and opportunities, and help them make more informed decisions.

For example, Zebra has a product called Workcloud Actionable Intelligence, which uses AI-generated insights in the retail sector to uncover cost-saving opportunities, identify and prioritize inventory issues, and identify the best opportunities to capture more sales. It even helps retailers minimize inventory and product losses and shrink.

In these cases, AI isn’t your new technical overlord. It’s just code running inside your software, and it crunches large sets of data, looks at your transactional or inventory data, sees patterns or trends in that data, detects potential problems or waste that might be overlooked, sends you alerts of issues and helps you identify your best opportunities for improvement.

When used by your managers, analysts or frontline workers, these kinds of AI and machine-learning tools can save time, labour and cost in several different areas of your operations. And it all happens with automated efficiency and machine-driven accuracy.

When you think about workforce communication, you might think that you’ve already got it covered. You might already have mobile devices, PCs, team collaboration software, videoconferencing, push-to-talk and PBX phone lines to help your teams communicate and collaborate in real time.

However, one big challenge with all these different platforms and solutions is that they’re not usually part of a single, unified solution. One conversation might be happening through a group text or a chat in your team collaboration software, and another might be happening on a video call, via push-to-talk or even in a conference room.

So, how do you bring it all together, so your teams can stay connected, communicate and collaborate more efficiently and reliably?

One of the best answers for many of our CDW customers is to use Zebra’s Workcloud Communication. It’s an all-in-one software suite that provides one place and one solution for voice and video calls, secure text, push-to-talk, file sharing and even PBX phone line access. It includes support for teams, groups and large-group communication as well.

This way, your teams don’t have to switch between different devices and different solutions to connect with the right person, share information, collaborate and get things done. It also helps keep things more organized and makes communication easier and more reliable, since there’s less risk of missing out or not knowing where to go for the right information.

To learn more about these and other automation technologies to help you boost efficiency and reduce costs, connect with our experts at CDW. We can help you find the right technologies at the right price for your budget, with the right results for your business.