Radial, Inc. a Bpost company, is a multinational eCommerce company headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Formed from the merger of Innotrac Corporation and the enterprise services unit of eBay Enterprise in 2016, Radial has a global network of fulfillment centers along with enabling technologies like advanced order management and omnichannel, payment and fraud management and customer care services — helping clients meet increasing consumer expectations and maintain market competitiveness.
With over 15 million square feet of purpose-built fulfillment capacity paired with impressive technology and transportation solutions, Radial specialists sources orders and sends them to their destinations with unparalleled efficiency — not just when orders are steady, but during high-demand holiday spikes or when a “must-have” item goes big on Instagram.
Radial had been using Ivanti Wavelink software on its Zebra Technologies devices for well over a decade. Since 2015, Scott Gehrke, Sr. Manage of Enterprise Support Services, and the engineering team at Radial, were tasked to evaluate and consider enhancing opportunities for the company’s radio frequency technology.
Part of this effort was due to the existing operating system nearing its end of life. Radial decided to migrate to the ultra-rugged Zebra TC72 Android Touch devices and implement Ivanti Velocity.
Radial saw positive results after starting small pilots at several sites. Eventually, they were determined to transition two of the company’s largest North American sites to 100% Androids. Now, Radial is scaling the technology across their entire network.
With clients’ businesses shifting towards eCommerce, there’s a need to process orders quickly and correctly. Partnering with Zebra Androids and the Ivanti Velocity software, powered by Wavelink, enabled Radial to increase efficiency in their radio frequency mobile device processes. An example of this was replacing up to 12 key presses with one touch of the screen, leading to a 24% reduction in total cycle time per pick transaction.
The Ivanti Velocity solution can interface to any existing warehouse management system (WMS) or other supply chain management system, without needing to migrate or modify the host application. In Radial’s case, the Velocity application enables the company to simplify the end user experience for all six of their warehouse management platforms.
Cody Tipton, Outbound Manager with Radial Fulfillment Services, elaborated on the efficiencies his team was experiencing. Concerning the inbound process, the company has seen an uptick in “put away percent per associate and how many carts they’re able to put away in an hour,” he said. “We’ve had to actually rebalance the way we run our department between the prep and the put away side to provide a better balance of work for our associates.”
The Radial team shared high praise for the Zebra TC72 Android devices and the Ivanti Velocity solution, which enables the Android devices to function. In fact, Velocity works on all mobile hardware devices. Migration with Velocity means no changes are needed to telnet or browser apps, nor to the host application. The framework can also integrate, collect data, track and quickly detect issues that impact operational efficiency.
As for the Zebra devices, Radial’s Dennis Wegenast, Value Stream Manager, praises their ease of use:
“The old technology we had was physically larger, and a little heavier. The new Zebra scanners look like a smartphone with a touchscreen and no physical keys on the device. Simple scanning of barcodes is better with the new equipment — one click of the gun versus three or four clicks of the old RF gun.”
For Radial, Velocity accelerates task-screen navigation and enables the workforce to enter data more quickly and accurately. It’s taken less time to bring new task workers up to speed.
The Ivanti Velocity console and client are localized to support multiple languages. According to Dennis, this makes it easier to recruit new task workers. “Here in Tradeport, we have a large Cuban population of Spanish speakers, and many who speak Swahili. The end goal is to be able to attract those populations, especially as we get closer to our peak season. This technology provides these new task workers with the opportunity to switch to their native language. That is big.”
Ivanti Wavelink, Supply Chain division of Ivanti is the global leader in supply chain solutions that focus on task worker operational excellence in business-critical environments. The world’s top organizations use our industry-leading Mobile Enterprise Platform to enhance worker productivity at the edge while offering IIoT capabilities using low-code, low-risk automation, with actionable outcomes.
Note: A customer’s results are specific to its total environment/experience, of which Ivanti is a part. Individual results may vary based on each customer’s unique environment.