Hi guys
Now As Indians WE LOVE SWEETS & SNACKS :)
This can be checked from the lines of people at sweet shops during festival season & range of sweets that we gift to each other. In any normal day too, many people can be seen at various sweet shops.
A Normal Sweet store experience in India is something like this:
- Huge Waiting lines for ordering & at checkout (due to slow process) thereby hampering shopping experience of customers.
- Paper receipts given by each ordering counter which in turn have to be submitted at checkout counter for payment.
- People who want to buy less may not decide to purchase considering time taken to checkout.
- The whole place looks like a food market with less focus on flow of customers leaving visitors confused.
Now, I happen to visit Chitale sweets in Pune, India which is famous for its sweets & snacks.
Have I noticed anything.
Well yes, its the ordering techniques that these guys are using.
- Customer are given RFID embedded plastic bar when he enters.
- Customer takes that bar, goes to the respective counters & decide which sweet to buy
- Once he has decided he hands over this bar to the person at the counter who inputs what has been taken, quantity & price of the respective item,
- Once he his done with one counter the customer can go onto next counters and similarly do the same process incase he wants something else.
- Finally he goes to the payment counters and hands over the bar to the person who places the bar on a machine and checks what the customer has taken and how much to charge.
- The customer pays & walks out.
Benefits of system
- No paper involved, so saving the environment while using technology
- No need for handling different receipts of different counters & submitting at end. You just need to submit one bar.
- Works as a useful research tool for owners of shop to know what is being purchased as data is entered simultaneously.
- Proper flow is maintained in the shop reducing anxiety of users and thereby enhancing shopping experience
- Waiting times are drastically reduced as the processing gets faster(no need to input amount & quantity from various receipts), enhancing the user experience as well as processing more number of bills.
The technology has been developed by Chitale Digitals which is a sister concern of sweet shop. I checked with the owner & he mentioned they are using it for the past two years & right now an updated version is being developed.
Oh yes…..the bar can hold upto 11 transactions…..so you can purchase large number of sweets :)
Thanks
Neeraj
