Theatro: “Heads-up and Hands-free” with IoT Wearables

Through the convergence of tiny embedded computers, ubiquitous wireless networks, and the Internet, IoT has the potential to transform nearly every area of business operations. Enterprises with large hourly workforces such as retail, hospitality and manufacturing have yet to realize the same massive productivity gains from smart mobile devices like those enterprises with large professional workforces. Hourly service and manufacturing workers are hobbled if required to carry a smartphone or tablet while trying to do their job since they need their hands free and their eyes focused on their work. Thus, the mobile device explosion that has transformed and connected so much of society in the last 10 years has largely passed these workers by.

The emergence of tiny IoT wearable computers with a voice user interfaces have the opportunity to do for hourly workers what the smartphone with a screen user interface did for professionals, consequently unleashing a massive onslaught of productivity improvements and improved customer experiences in the service sectors.

The Container Store, a Texas-based national retailer of storage and organization products, was challenged by the fact that their store employees lacked an effective way to communicate with each in order to act as a team to serve customers. Like most retailers, they used broadcast walkie-talkies for in-store communication, a few handheld mobile computer devices in the store to access IT resources and had experimented with smartphones. The Container Store executives recognized that this approach was negatively impacting their employees’ ability to provide great customer service and it created inefficiencies in their day-to-day store operations as most employees had go to the information they needed, versus the needed information coming to them. “Customer experience is today’s retail battleground and we needed a way to streamline our in-store communication and connect our employees to the BI systems and alerts to ensure they could find the right person or information on the sales floor to provide great customer service,” remarks John Thrailkill, Vice President Store Systems, The Container Store.