Drugstore retailer dm has equipped around 2,100 of its 4,036 stores across Europe with Samsung smartphones of the Galaxy A series. Almost all internal processes and tasks are now handled via the devices. Employees can access information about the products via an app on their smartphone and thus provide customers with better advice. Traditional store and merchandise management processes are also controlled via the mobile devices.
dm launched the project to digitise store processes back in 2017 with around 150 smartphones. Employees were first able to handle merchandise management processes in an app. The Samsung device’s camera was already used as a scanner to capture the barcode. The classic handheld devices were not sufficient for the company’s requirements. Today, apps on the smartphones cover a wide range of other store activities – from store-related cash management with cash drawer organisation to employee scheduling and training with dm-Lernwelt. The drugstore operator currently has 52,000 smartphones in use.
dm’s IT subsidiary, dmTech, provides employees with around 80 different apps and is responsible for rolling out the devices and carrying out all updates. “The apps on our smartphones can be roughly divided into three categories: Mapping basic store and merchandise management processes, apps that support colleagues’ day-to-day work and apps for specific individual needs,” says Cornelia Ratzl, Enterprise Resource Planning division at dmTech. The applications that address the specific needs of employees include, for example, an app that determines blood sugar levels.
dm saw Samsung as obvious choice
Samsung A-series devices were used in the project from the very beginning. The Samsung smartphones were seen as an obvious choice for the drugstore operator due to their performance and features. In addition, many employees were already using the technology provider’s devices privately and were familiar with their use. dm now uses the Enterprise Edition from Samsung with a guaranteed two-year market availability of the smartphones.
“The device series simply fitted our requirements perfectly. The uncomplicated management of the smartphones also convinced us right from the start,” says Christian Stäblein, IT Systems division at dmTech. Certain functions of the Samsung Knox Suite security and management application, such as Knox Asset Intelligence, make the IT subsidiary’s admin work easier and make it possible to see which apps are popular and which are not.
Increased personalisation
“The smartphone has triggered a profound paradigm shift in the company across all levels and functions,” says Cornelia Ratzel, Enterprise Resource Planning division at dmTech. “Practically every process and every task are now thought of as mobile from the outset and should also be able to be handled via smartphone.”
In future, the smartphone apps at dm will be even more personalised so that they can provide employees with more targeted support for specific tasks. The drugstore retailer is also planning to make wider use of mobile devices with the use of Samsung DeX: this application allows the smartphone to be connected directly to a monitor, transforming it into a workstation.
