There are many ways to "locate" stolen assets, like shopping carts off your property. When we first began doing this 6 years ago, we placed Tile trackers on carts. It was easy, they were cheap, and...it didn't work. Sure, a few locations were correct but the batteries died in a few months and the location accuracy was fuzzy at best.
But that wasn't the worst part.
You couldn't see how many carts you had, how many you had lost, no trends, no usable data. As we kept trying new technologies that were more accurate, like GPS, we realized there was an even bigger usability gap among various software platforms: You still have to go get the cart. Sure knowing where a cart is helps make that easier but what about going to collect 30 carts across 100 locations? If you've ever looked at 300 pins on a map and tried to make sense of it, we'll spare you the experience - its not easy to use.
To further complicate the software experience...retailers are busy. Store managers aren't going to stare at a map of where their stolen carts are all day and send coordinates to retrieval companies. To make cart tracking a truly effective technology for retailers, it has make the experience easy for everyone involved - especially the people going out to retrieve the carts.
To accomplish this, our QuickTrack software at STG uses 3 unique components:
- Cloud Based Location Solving: To prolong battery life, we don't compute the carts location with the tracking device. The device just sends some data. We actually calculate where the cart is in the software. We use GPS, WiFi and cellular data to produce a pinpoint accurate location. By shifting this process to the software, we can run more intelligent location solving algorithms, and save battery life. Most cart locations are within 30 ft. This dramatically speeds up the retrieval process.
- Built-in Retrieval Routing and Collection Management: You can add any off property cart to a recovery list to send to your cart retrieval partners as a Google Maps route. You can pick them manually, or QuickTrack can select the 23 most likely to retrieve carts near your store and send an optimized retrieval list to your cart collection teams. This can run on a schedule and be sent automatically. You can see how this works in this video link.
- Google Maps: All of the routing and location stops are Google Maps compatible. This means the only "app" experience someone needs is one of the most universally used apps and is likely already on your retrieval partners' phones. This reduces complexity, makes it easy for anyone to use, and gives retailers more options: Nobody outside your company needs access to your software. They just need Google Maps. The QuickTrack software sends a Google Maps URL link to them and they are on their way.
This allows operators to spend less time worrying about how to get carts back in the store and uses your existing retrieval resources more efficiently. Using our Cart Collection Planner tools, like Express Route, stores are seeing retrieval success rates of 90%. This also allows you to stay in total control of your inventory, your data and use your resources more efficiently.
Use the form below to get in touch with us and see how our routing features can make your cart retrieval more efficient.