The development of franchise business modes contribute to improving work efficiency and increasing benefits to strengthen enterprises competitiveness. Currently, these have been widely applied in most coastal cities in mainland China, which contribute to the major business and organization modes.

This solution document helps to effectively solve the problems occurred in these processes and to optimize the management and operations of these businesses.

Below are the key points and problems to be highlighted and solved in sales management, inventory management and stocktaking.

1) Cargo management
It includes cargo collecting management, order management, return management and commodity management. It's mainly applied in order submission, warehouse in and out, shelving, sales, commodity inquiry, return, cost calculating and other aspects. Since the traditional data collecting methods are time and energy consuming, and not easy to save and inquire, how to have optimal workflows are one of the most focused problems to be solved among a great many managers.

2) Sales management
It includes sales performance of the products and related membership management. First, it's used to collect, read and modify basic information of product specs, classification, details, prices, current sales performance, promotional prices and more. Then it's to manage member cards/tags and membership information. How to simply the workflow rather than going over between shelves and computers and without having to check tons of paper materials – all of these have become a one-million-dollar question for managers and operators.

3) Inventory stocktaking
It mainly includes inventory and stocktaking. A method that helps to form a workflow – connect sales information to inventory and stock real-time – lots of paper work sheets and work force can be saved. This also ensures information accuracy saves time. As a result, managers can carry out stocktaking once a week or a month, or spending 10 ~ 10 minutes on this. This helps operators understand sales performance better and adjust market strategies effectively.

Our handheld data terminals are used in this solution to simplify and optimize these workflows, helping companies in this industry to achieve higher sales and management performance.

Based on our analysis, how to effectively simply the work procedures while managing costs better and giving mangers, operators and their clients more convenience are the most important issue. And the use of handheld data terminals in these chain stores help to optimize that.

1.Management system and workflow

As shown in the picture, the procedures of goods incoming, selling, storing and membership management are done in chain stores, without the needs of manual data input.

For example: 1) When the goods go in to stock, use handhelds to read the barcodes or RFID tags attached and transfer data to backend.

2) Before sales, inquire goods details via attached bar codes and labels, including stock remnant, price, model number, discount information and so on.

3) On sales – generate orders and submit to back-end database and update product information and send order feedback accordingly.

4) After settlement, to update product information at back-end data base to ensure balance of sales and inventory.

5) On daily stocktaking, to read goods information and send back to backend database to obtain inventory and sales feedback.

2.Main functions in the systems handhelds applied
1) In and out, store management
① Commodity management
Chain stores receive goods assigned, and manage on/off shelves, return and handle various outputs of commodities.

a) Inspectors use handheld data terminals to check corresponding serial numbers, quantities, origin of manufacturing, species, specs, packing time, quality maintenance time and other information. Upload data collected to database and save them into backend database.

b) Through WLAN of the whole chain stores, staff carrying handheld data terminals can inquire about goods exact location and status on shelves and zone, with daily random checks and stocktaking, operators can view the storage status, space, sales and etc information and send back to warehousing areas, capacity, volume and equipment limitations. The historical data can be analyzed to effectively use shelve space, in order to optimize in and out, incoming volume, placement to adjust the sales.

As a whole, using handheld data terminals, with features of bar code scanning, RFID technologies, you can manage commodities more easily – reading and saving information, commodity infrastructure management: every commodity category, gross interests, shelve/location management, including new products on shelve, shelve adjustment, alignment, status change; to set different status 'available for sale', 'not available', and to manage the pricing: historical pricing adjustment, sale pricing, promotion pricing, discounted and so forth.

② Goods counting/stocktaking management:
Enable you to carry out counting works in the whole store, by sector counting, and many other counting methods, so as to generate relevant work sheets and charts (i.e. profit and loss statements) and send back the central database, ensuring management accuracy and standard and proving fundamental evidence for headquarters and large stores, warehouses.

Stocktaking is a daily work for a store, which allows managers to get a better understanding of updated status and find out non-normal inventory losses. The use of handheld data terminals improves the work efficiency in stocktaking. This includes: stocktaking data input, input data category, quantity, counting result, interact with system, and upload results to database.

2) Membership management:
Management on member cards. Use handhelds or desktop equipment to read and write member cards, interaction with back-end systems.

1. Classify members, accordingly, such as gold, silver and so on.
2. To recharge cards, registry management, classification, deliver cards and recharge.
3. Members use cards to purchase at favorable prices.
4. Analyze member data on a regular basis, focusing on purchasing status, activity, credits accumulation, credits exchange, birthday reminder and so on.
5. Upgrade: setup upgrade according to conditions, requirements.

As above descriptions, handhelds basic functions include bar code scanning, standard card/label reading/writing (ISO 14443A/15693), they can also be embedded with GPRS, 433 (or Bluetooth), WiFi data transmission functions, easy for long-distance operation.

3.The functionalities of handhelds in overall operation and management
Handhelds are used in chain stores as data collecting device, which transfer data between upfront sales and backend data base via reading bar codes and RFID tags.
The applications are two main ones:

1. Warehouse terminal support, for inventory management, improving incoming accuracy and visibility of warehousing
2. Customer service, sales terminals, to improve client relationship management, check product list quickly and to prevent from bulgar, promotion and so on.

This includes：
1) Chain store sales and order digital long-distance management
2) Headquarters can access sales/order data from each chain store real-time
3) Dynamic monitoring to sales performance of each chain store, for easy decision making
4) To realize real-time staff and member management in every chain store