Aldata wins at European IT Excellence Awards

Best Solution ISV Category, Communications and Mobility

A PDA-based voice order picking solution from Aldata is the industry-best according to European publisher and market intelligence company, IT Europa. Aldatas G.O.L.D Vocal PDA won Best Solution in the ISV category, communications and mobility, at IT Europas European IT excellence awards. The company won against competition from 49 organizations in 16 countries for the implementation of the G.O.L.D. Vocal solution at Leclerc Lecasud, the central buying and distribution group of E.Leclerc.

At Leclerc Lecasud, the G.O.L.D. Vocal solution is used for all order picking in the dry goods warehouse. The solution enables Warehouse operators to use PDA terminals with headsets to receive and transmit voice commands to the Warehouse Management System, which has complete visibility of the operators and the warehouse stock. This enables the operators to carry out order picking assignments in real-time for maximum efficiency and productivity without the administrative overhead of paper-based operations. It has also been proven to reduce the number of pick rate errors.

Alain Robeau, Support Services Director, Leclerc Lecasud, said: "The voice order picking solution which has recently gone into production at Leclerc Lecasud operates in a PDA environment.

We already have experience of a voice solution with voice-dedicated terminals but Aldatas PDA solution appealed to us for many reasons:

  -  Compatibility with existing systems: G.O.L.D. Vocal in a PDA environment is compatible with other picking systems that we are already using. This allows us to protect existing investments

  -  Independence in hardware selection: G.O.L.D. Vocal now enables us to be independent of the hardware supplier

  -  Speech recognition system: G.O.L.D. Vocal is a system that operates without any voice pre-registering. This represents significant gains in time for temporary and seasonal personnel

  -  Second generation voice solution future-proofs our investment: G.O.L.D. Vocals ability to fully utilise the PDA multi-modal applications (screen, pistol, keyboard, voice, scanning, RFID and barcodes, etc) means that we can apply this technology to operations other than order picking and inventory"

Mr Robeau concluded: "The benefits brought by the implementation of this system include increased quality because the error rate is divided by eight. It has increased productivity by approximately 12 per cent and improved stock management because we can integrate perpetual inventory during order picking.

The multi-modal opportunities offered by G.O.L.D. Vocal enable us to consider redesigning other processes, such as truck loading. We can certainly see there may be additional gains in quality and productivity due to multi-modal processes, something which is not available in a voice-dedicated environment".

Jean-Franois Le Garrec, G.O.L.D. Vocal Development Director, Aldata Solution, added: "We are very proud of this award. It recognizes that Aldata increases efficiency in warehouses.

 
About Aldata

Aldata Solution is one of the global leaders in supply chain software for retail, wholesale and logistics companies.The company's comprehensive range of Supply Chain Management and In-Store solutions enable more than 300 customers across 50 countries to enhance productivity, profitability, performance and competitiveness. Aldata develops and supports its software through more than 600 Aldata professionals and a global partner network. Aldata is a public company quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange with the identifier ALD1V.