Tasks that were too time-consuming for the stores employees were either shifted to third-party
logistics providers or factories, or improved by enhancing the hand held devices. In order to ensure
store employees’ time was spent wisely, Isla requested the third-party logistics providers to unload the 13
merchandise and bring it to the selling floor. (Ton, Corsi, & Dessain, 2010) Additionally, the tasks of
attaching alarm tags to newly delivered garments had been shifted to the factories. This enabled sales
personnel to spend 3% more time serving customers and selling the garments as soon as it arrive at
the store instead of missing up to three hours of prime selling time in the past. (Rohwedder & Johnson,
2008)
PDAs that were used by store managers to place orders were also upgraded. The device now shows
how each garment rank by sales and enabled clerks to re-order best-sellers in less than an hour that
previously required about three hours to process. (Rohwedder & Johnson, 2008) More importantly,
the upgraded PDAs enabled store managers to send customer feedback to in-house designers,
updating the designers about fast changing trends instantly. This allowed Zara to take note which
products are less desirable and thus, reducing obsolescence costs. (Matchette & Lewinski, 2008)