Permanent inventory with a handheld scanner at the shelf saves you from the hectic pace at the end of the fiscal year. Restocking merchandise and scanning it – that’s part of everyday life in retail. During the annual inventory, merchandise needs to be tallied once a year.

The inventory management software DEWAS for headquarters and stores form the backbone of the product range offered by Superdata. The company from Hamburg quotes its market share at more than 50 percent with over 7,000 installations. Key applications are automated disposition, permanent inventory and mobile data acquisition. Thies Proppe answers all of our questions about inventory. He explains how the obligatory inventory count becomes a strategic opportunity for retail markets.

At the EuroShop we saw many applications for the new smartphones – including also some for store personnel use. Will MDE devices soon become obsolete? Not so, thinks Dr. Andreas Müller, because they are especially designed to withstand the harsh everyday life in retail and logistics. He also doesn’t believe that they will become smaller and smaller, because this would negatively impact their ease of handling. Retailers primarily use portable terminals with WLAN today.