Sept/Oct 2003

A major order for nearly 10,000 Intermec 700 Series Color handheld computers has been placed by supermarket giant Tesco. They will be supplied and supported by Herbert Retail, an Intermec partner.

The units replace an earlier generation of handhelds, and introduce new features to the company such as RF mobile communication, a graphical platform instead of text, and a user-friendly Microsoft Internet Explorer interface to replace terminal emulation.

The 700-series terminals will be deployed on a range of tasks including mobile applications, where Tesco will take advantage of their GPRS connectivity to feed data back to base in real time and to check accuracy of deliveries against invoices. Later they may also be used in the Tesco.com home shopping operation for managing delivery transactions and signature capture.

Many of the units will be used in stores for price mark-downs, printing new shelf-edge labels, logging general stock transactions, and producing "planagrams" of product layouts and shelf designs.

 

According to Philip Robbins-Jones, Tesco's IT strategic development director: "We were impressed by the innovation, flexibility and adaptability of the Intermec 700 Color computer."