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Supermarket queues

In order to avoid the desperation of people like our friend Julius Cartson, queues in retail establishments should be avoided as much as possible. Not only because of the inconvenience that they cause to customers, but also because they can lead to the loss of sales when the waiting time is longer than 5 minutes. According to the Epson study, these lost sales can account for 8.92% of annual sales.

In order to manage queues in a cost-effective manner, having accurate information, both historically and in real time, is key so that available resources can be made more flexible and waiting times reduced.

Queues are caused by a temporary imbalance between the demand for the service and the system’s capacity to supply that service. The aim is not to eliminate queues at any cost but to optimise resources within the sales room, seeking a balance between the cost and quality of service.

The information needed to analyse the problem is the speed and number of customers waiting to be served, the number of people served and the average time needed to serve each customer. The problem is that this information does not only vary according to the section within the supermarket, but also according to the day of the week, month, the time zone and even the weather. It is thus essential to have a system in place like Horustec, which provides the establishment with information in real time, in a simple graphic way (such as heat maps) and which, in addition, allows the establishment to keep historical to enable making projections and anticipate the problem by redistributing resources in advance.

Horustec, is a solution developed by CarttecLAB’s R+D+i team to help you in the management of resources in your sales room.