Mobile Printing Requirements for Direct Store Delivery (DSD) Applications
Selecting the best available mobile printer for the direct-store-delivery (DSD) application is as critical as the mobile computer selection.
Rugged mobile thermal printers’ benefits over impact technology are significant and include:
- Smaller, more portable footprint
- Ease of use
- Reliability
- Total cost of ownership
- Battery life
By David Krebs, VDC Research Analyst
Direct store delivery (DSD) is a key method of selling and distributing products for a variety of industries and especially for high volume food and beverage products. DSD is a business process that manufacturers use to both sell and distribute goods directly to point of sale (PoS) or point of consumption (PoC) including additional product and market related services such as merchandising, surveying and data collection, campaign management or collecting competitive intelligence.
Mobile printing is increasingly central to any effective DSD solution as it saves times over manually creating invoices and allows drivers to spend more time on merchandising and sales. In addition, DSD operations leverage mobile printers to support on-demand printing of variable information and are increasingly personalizing the content for greater value add. Mobile printing solutions enable DSD drivers to create accurate updated orders, pick lists, delivery receipts, invoices, settlement reports and other documentation. In addition to the time saving benefits associated with mobile printing – printing can reduce time spent on invoicing by as much as two thirds – it also ensures increased documentation accuracy.
Printing technology supporting DSD applications has evolved significantly. To support the full page, multi-part form printing requirement impact technology was the early technology of choice for DSD solutions. Today – outside of select country markets with unique application requirements – mobile thermal printers are almost exclusively used. Although thermal printers cannot support multi-part forms output its benefits over impact technology are significant and include:
- Smaller, more portable footprint
- Ease of use
- Reliability
- Total cost of ownership
- Battery life
Mobile thermal printers come in three primary web widths: 2”, 3” and 4”. Although all web widths have been used for mobile DSD applications, the market is generally gravitating towards 3” solutions to leverage their balance between larger web width and portable form factor. Narrower widths can result in smaller fonts and longer invoices, though, if much information is printed for each line item. DSD operations have trended towards smaller receipts from multi-part forms to save on consumables. Assuming DSD receipt output of two 6” long thermal receipts (using a 4” web width printer) end-users will generally experience consumables cost savings of 45-50% using thermal over full page two-ply media.
A key catalyst driving adoption of mobile thermal printers to support DSD applications has been their favorable cost of ownership over other technologies. DSD is a mission critical process and the failure of any technology supporting the application can lead to significant losses in productivity and potentially revenues. Recent studies by VDC Research indicated that the failure rate of non-rugged mobile printers is over three times the failure rate of rugged printers, leading to substantial increases in TCO.
More specifically:
- The leading sources of failure included the paper feeder, batteries, print heads and cables. Average annual failure rates for rugged mobile printers was 5.8% and 17.0% for non-rugged mobile printers.
- Lost productivity – as a result of mobile printer failure – was a leading contributor to TCO. On average mobile workers lost 35-40 minutes of productivity when their mobile printer failed. Productivity loss represented as much as 40% of a mobile printer’s TCO.
Selecting the best available mobile printer for the DSD application is as critical as the mobile computer selection. Especially for DSD applications – where the printing function is so central to the process – it is important not to fall into the trap of viewing the mobile printer as a ‘dumb peripheral’ and – to maximize uptime and worker productivity – ensuring that the best possible printer is deployed.
