Inkling Collaboration Launches at NRF 2018: Retail’s BIG Show
A Next Generation Mobile Solution to Drive Better Retail Performance
NEW YORK, NY – January 15, 2018 – Inkling, the leader in frontline workforce enablement, today introduced Inkling Collaboration, a new product that combines communications, task management, and data analytics into a unified platform for retail operations. With Inkling Collaboration, retailers can achieve superior store performance by connecting the entire workforce together — putting frontline employees in touch with the people and resources they need to get work done while giving operations leaders visibility into what is happening in the field.
“Retailers understand the critical role their frontline employees play in shaping the customer experience, but they’re working with outdated tools,” said Matt MacInnis, CEO of Inkling. “We saw our retail customers managing their stores through legacy PC-based task management solutions, while their frontline employees were informally adopting tools like texting and social media to collaborate. So we knew there was a gap.”
Traditional task management software focuses only on top-down command and compliance while enterprise social platforms promote sharing and connections, but are divorced from day-to-day operations. Inkling Collaboration allows employees to share and access information when and where they need, specifically to support in-store execution.
Users interact with the platform through a web interface and a mobile app. At headquarters, operations leaders use the web interface to communicate with all levels of the field hierarchy and gain real-time visibility into performance across store locations, which closes the loop and helps them make data-driven decisions.
With the mobile app, store teams reduce the time they currently waste in the back office searching for information across email, text messages and the company’s intranet. They can find prioritized task lists, view relevant communications filtered for their role or store, message peers to tap into their collective knowledge, and share real-time progress updates, including photos from their stores.
The product was co-developed with multiple retailers, including Vera Bradley, whose teams use Inkling Collaboration to work better together and execute on projects like floor resets, visual merchandising updates, and seasonal promotions.
Early adopters of Inkling Collaboration said that they have been able to streamline store operations through quicker and seamless communication while the field is able to share best practices in real time, get answers to questions from each other, and nimbly react to the needs of the business.
To learn more about the all-new Inkling Collaboration, please visit the Inkling booth (#3861) on Level 3, NRF Expo Hall at the Javits Convention Center in New York. You can get more information about our NRF presence here or request a product demo here.
About Inkling
Inkling builds software that empowers frontline employees and helps organizations turn their plans into action. Inkling is a mobile-first solution that puts actionable information into the hands of the frontline, when they need it, on any device. Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, Inkling is backed by Sequoia Capital and Sapphire Ventures. Learn more at www.inklingelemdev.wpengine.com