SPECS Exclusive: Tablets unlock store development potential

More powerful than a smartphone and more portable than a laptop, tablet computers offer retail design and construction professionals some unique opportunities.



In a session at Chain Store Age’s SPECS 2016 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas, March 13-15, “Tablets Unlocked,” Bart Waldeck, CMO and senior VP of product strategy for Tango, identified the top five opportunities tablets offer the store development process.



“Tablets can assist in real estate market rides, for site visits and deal-making,” said Waldeck. “They can also help project management, scorecarding to ensure store sites adhere to field standards, maintenance service requests and work order management, and facility assessment. You can conduct in-field surveys to determine where you are from a maintenance perspective.”



For example, Waldeck said Yum Brands uses Tango’s SaaS-based tablet software to scorecard franchise sites to ensure they are meeting chainwide store standards.



“Franchise organizations understand that from a branding and design perspective, their buildings must meet standards,” said Waldeck.



Yum field personnel use tablets equipped with Tango software to take images of franchise stores that are then tagged and stored in a cloud-based image vault. Each photo is rated against a scorecard on a wide variety of features, such as whether colors in the logo match corporate-approved shades. A calibrator runs the images through a variety of analytics and metrics.



Patti Valarioti, regional sales manager of PlanGrid, said her company is focused on tablet apps because apps are becoming a universal means of gaining connectivity.



“Everyone is using some sort of app, whether for social or for work,” said Valarioti. “Life is too short for bad software.”



Valarioti said PlanGrid’s app, which digitizes paper blueprints and stores them in the cloud for real-time access, solves three major problems associated with blueprint management – paper, computer filing, and slow rendering.



“Plans are often out date and it’s cumbersome to keep updating paper plans,” said Valarioti. “Plus paper is extremely expensive, especially if there are multiple versions. There is also a file problem with folders upon folders stored on your computer, and a slow problem. Companies are moving to mobile and finding they can work anywhere, but there are rendering issues.”



By using a tablet-based app such as PlanGrid’s, Valarioti said everyone can work off the same cloud-based blueprints and view and edit them at the same time, with markups synced and updated in real time. This also eliminates the need to store multiple files and the greater power and bandwidth of a tablet avoids rendering issues associated with smartphone solutions.



“You can save time and money and rework on all platforms,” said Valarioti.