By speeding up the entire process and enabling enhancements such as loss prevention cameras, remote or integrated payment terminals and innovative bagging solutions, service quality and front-end productivity are elevated to a whole new level.

With efficiency at the check-out high on the customer loyalty retention leaderboard for retailers, Datalogic has broken through the lane barrier to provide an integrated solution for enhanced speed and improved product throughput whatever the preferred retail environment.

A global leader in Automatic Identification and total solutions provider of bar code readers, data collection mobile computers and vision systems, Datalogic places the efficient checkout at the same level of importance as price and product sales. With a longstanding reputation in the retail industry and insider knowledge of store environments, the company sees checkout operations as a major opportunity for retailers to enhance their service levels and keep their customers coming back. This view is supported by recent surveys showing an inefficient checkout is what customers like least when they are out shopping. It also applies to self-checkout lanes, where queues can build up due to inefficient operations, blocking and lack of assisted trouble-shooting.

With this in mind, Datalogic identifies three key drivers for retailers: they need to improve efficiency so that queues are reduced and labor can be redistributed with more direct service and increased throughput in one lane; secondly, retailers need to improve the shopping experience for their customers with more focus on interaction at the checkout, rather than on scanning products; thirdly, the importance of quantifying throughput is a key consideration for retailers in order to combat loss and theft at the point of sale (POS).

All these requirements are met by Datalogic's new, sophisticated automated checkout portal, revolutionizing the shopping experience. This new breakthrough technology was presented at the NRF EXPO in New York this month. The automated scanner coupled with a variety of different implementations offered by solution providers identifies products using an omni-directional multi-plane scanner with full digital imaging, with and without a barcode. It allows retailers to provide customers an assisted checkout with all the benefits of automation, freeing staff to interact with the shopper with regard to special promotions, assistance with coupons and more. By speeding up the entire process and enabling enhancements such as loss prevention cameras, remote or integrated payment terminals and innovative bagging solutions, service quality and front-end productivity are elevated to a whole new level.

"Although the idea of automated checkout is not a new one, the technology for a commercially viable state of the art solution did not exist until now. We see the automatic scanner as a major breakthrough allowing us to launch something revolutionary for retailers and consumers, the engine at the heart of store operations," says Bill Parnell, CEO of Datalogic ADC. "As we work both with system integrators and with tier one retailers around the world, we understand the needs of the industry, and the necessity to quickly adapt progressive solutions to suit the image, environment and service philosophy of any given retailer at the POS."

This breakthrough technology is especially relevant for medium to high volume stores, for both express and primary lanes where productivity and speed of checkout, customer satisfaction and loss prevention matter. One can easily envision innovative implementation with both assisted and unassisted lanes. Datalogic predicts automated checkout will be a revolutionary step function improvement over current best practices and will be seen in stores everywhere in the very near future.