Navigating The 2021 Retail Holiday Season

The 2021 holiday season is already posing significant challenges to retailers. One of the greatest challenges for retailers this year will be overcoming a tight labor market while combating high employee turnover, hiring and training seasonal employees, and making sure customers stay engaged and happy during one of the year’s most stressful and trying times for retailers and consumers alike.

This year, the retail industry is expected to add over 700,000 seasonal holiday workers — all while managing their existing, often disengaged workforce. This retail period is key to delivering profit for retailers, but this challenging workforce environment could ultimately create a drag on retailers’ profitability. So how can retailers prepare their workforce to thrive this challenging holiday season?

Table of Contents

Learn How Orion Transforms Retail Operations

Meeting Customer Expectations with an Exceptional Retail Workforce

According to RSR Research, 58% of leading retailers admit they are struggling to meet changing customer expectations of a seamless experience across digital and physical touchpoints. Retailers need to equip their workforce with technology that supports their ability to provide a consistent and exceptional customer experience — no matter how they shop this holiday season.

While e-commerce is growing, shoppers are proving that they still want that personalized experience that can’t be achieved by shopping online at home. In fact, Forrester predicts brick-and-mortar retail sales will still account for almost three-quarters of all U.S. retail sales until at least 2024. This pattern shows the in-store experience is irreplaceable.

Brick-and-mortar stores are retailers’ opportunity to engage directly with their customers and are the most important physical touchpoints with consumers. Customer experience is formed by employee touchpoints from the drive-up lane to curbside pickup and from the aisles to the register. However, new seasonal employees can make or break a customer’s experience.

Adding seasonal employees into this high-stakes environment makes for a risky business situation. On the one hand, retailers need extra help during their busiest time of the year. On the other hand, retailers need to make sure customers are happy and receive the best service possible. The fact is that this exceptional service will lead to more upsells and cross-sells.

It’s mission-critical for retailers to do everything they can to make sure seasonal (and full-time!) employees are prepared.

Orion’s push-to-talk (PTT 2.0) communication and collaboration platform fits this need. Retailers empower and connect their frontline retail workforce with voice, text, and multimedia on any device. Bonus? Orions’s intelligent communication and collaboration technology offers many more transformative benefits for retail workers — new, seasonal, and experienced alike.

Here are 4 ways retailers can use Orion’s Push-to-Talk 2.0 collaboration platform to build a thriving operation with a faster, smarter workforce this 2021 holiday season:

#1: Seamlessly Train and Integrate Seasonal Employees

The first key to a successful holiday season is getting new and seasonal workers up to speed fast. All retailers know that reduced training time hurts the bottom line. Translation: All associates need to be trained — Day One/Minute One — on how to support critical functions like same-day fulfillment, BOPIS/BOPAC, register operations, customer service, and more.

Retailers that deploy communication and collaboration platforms empower new (and existing) workers with voice-driven access to training manuals and best-practice guides at the point of work. New employees seamlessly retrieve information to better serve customers on their first day on the job. From any point on the floor, they can access information like the process for accepting a check, pricing on a specific product, or store policies on returns.

As frontline workers gain confidence in the store process and protocols, they can perform more advanced tasks crucial to making personalized recommendations, cross-sells, and upsells to customers. Retail associates connect to SMEs like sommeliers or tech experts to answer questions in any store or at headquarters. Ultimately, retail associates are seamlessly onboarded, using voice to access critical information from their point-of-work — all while staying heads-up and focused on customers.

#2: Increase Productivity and Performance

In this tight labor market, retailers need to supercharge their retail associates with technology that enables them to accomplish more.

AI Voice-Driven Process Automation and Intelligence

Orion Voice Bots and Workflows enable seasonal retail associates to act faster and smarter while remaining heads-up with customers. Voice AI workflows coupled with integration to the store’s inventory, operations, or fulfillment databases empower associates who are working hard to meet customer expectations during the holidays.

Let’s take one example: A customer asks if a certain item will be back in stock soon. Traditionally, an associate would leave the customer and search for the required product and corresponding stock information in a POS system. This is time-consuming and takes the focus off the customer. Orion’s intelligent collaboration platform allows the associate to request the information in seconds with a voice trigger. The customer gets answers fast, and the associate remains heads-up and engaged, able to answer more questions, help more customers, and ultimately increase product throughput.

Store System Integrations

The Orion platform uses automation and integrations with store systems to revolutionize customer service. Orion Voice Bots notify employees when customers trip motion sensors in sections with high-end goods or ring a buzzer for access to a locked case. Associates receive a notification to respond to the customer request, with more frequent, subsequent reminders as time goes on. If no associates are available, the notification escalates to a manager to resolve, ensuring no request goes unanswered. Retailers gain assurances that associates and managers capitalize on every customer’s request — even when resources are stretched thin during the busy holiday season.

Omnichannel Holiday Shopping Support

Big-box retailer Target saw same-day pick-up or delivery channels increase 60% in Q3 this year, foreshadowing high growth in omnichannel shopping demand this holiday season.

Orion’s automation assists with fulfilling omnichannel orders by notifying associates of new orders, when orders are ready, and more. Associates are always connected, even from the curb, parking lot, or on a delivery run. Customers benefit from faster fulfillment times for BOPIS, BOPAC, and same-day delivery.

Instant Holiday Merchandise Experts

Orion also amplifies each employee’s performance with access to SMEs, making each employee an instant expert — even seasonal employees. Let’s say a customer asks an associate which wine best pairs with a particular holiday meal. The associate uses Orion PTT 2.0 to ask the company’s wine expert — whether the SME (sommelier) is located in the store, in a region, or at headquarters — and receives real-time, expert advice on which wine the customer should purchase.

Orion enables seasonal associates to provide fast, superior customer service, and retailers enable their workforce to accomplish more with less during their busiest time of the year.

Learn about Intelligence Amplification for Retail

#3: Engage Employees When It Matters Most

E-commerce is rising faster than ever, but 60 to 70% of shoppers indicate that they will research both online and in-store before making a purchase this holiday season. As shopping behavior changes, retailers have to focus on creating a stellar in-store holiday shopping experience in order to keep them coming back to the brick-and-mortar store.

Retail employee engagement is a critical component of building this positive customer experience during the holidays. Unfortunately, as many as 1 in 3 U.S. retail workers are disengaged from their work — a direct, negative impact on sales and customer satisfaction. If your current workers are already disengaged, what kind of message is that sending to your seasonal new hires?

Intuitive Technology

One immediate way to increase employee engagement is to provide technology that makes their jobs more fulfilling. Gallup estimates that Gen Z and Millennials make up 46% of the full-time workforce. This growing segment of the retail workforce lives in a technology-driven world and workers expect employers to provide intuitive, intelligent technology to support them at work in ways similar to their technology experiences at home.

Orion’s PTT 2.0 platform offers a superb experience with a single interface that supports communication and access to SMEs and store information. With Orion, retailers can use powerful, intuitive technology to motivate retail associates — veteran and seasonal alike. When retail associates are better equipped to perform their job, they are more likely to provide greater value to the customer experience, ultimately resulting in more upsells and cross-sells for retailers.

Team Collaboration

Retail collaboration technology enables associates to more easily and efficiently communicate with their teams. When associates are connected with their co-workers, they are more supportive of the mission of ensuring shoppers have the best holiday shopping experience.

Orion’s PTT 2.0 platform enables associates to use multimodal collaboration with high-quality push-to-talk audio and multimedia to connect in groups or 1:1 with managers and individual team members. Orion provides real-time language translation too, so multilingual teams can communicate no matter their language.

When employees have a better experience, customers will have a better shopping experience.

Learn how Orion digitally transforms store operations

#4: Improve Operational Control Over Busy Retail Organizations

Deloitte predicts holiday shopping sales could rise by 9% this year, requiring stores and supply chains to run smoothly to meet soaring demand. Retail managers are a critical component in ensuring a profitable holiday shopping season. Store managers wear many hats as they handle the retail floor workforce and support associates as they drive sales, fulfill omnichannel orders, and satisfy customer expectations.

Advanced Location Services

During the frenetic holiday shopping season, managers especially need greater organizational visibility across the retail floor, stock room, and even the parking lot as associates fulfill BOPIS/BOPAC orders. Orion’s collaboration platform provides management with a detailed view of their workforce and operations from an individual store, regional center, or headquarters.

Retailers use advanced location services to view a complete map of their workforce in real time. Drivers, warehouse employees, and retail floor associates are all instantly accessible, helping retailers respond to dynamic customer demands and redeploy resources fast.

Flexible Group Communications

The holiday shopping season requires fast thinking, instant collaboration, and dynamic responses when assisting customers. Orion’s Operational Control comes with ad hoc 1:1 or limited group environments to help managers and associates quickly address urgent, evolving, or dynamic issues. Managers are able to seamlessly coordinate with specific team members without distracting others from their tasks. This comes in handy when reminding team members to collect shopping carts from the parking lot, redirecting store associates to busy shopping aisles, supporting new or seasonal hires, or even responding to shoplifting.

Analysis and Optimization of Holiday Season Strategy

Each data point generated by the wealth of communication and location information is recorded and stored. Retailers gain insights into their real-time holiday operations and are able to measure and analyze the entire message stream. From there, managers can turn this information into useful insights to enhance customer service, improve operations, and drive profit during this critical period.

The Orion Collaboration Platform for Retail

Transform the Holiday Shopping Season With Orion

Retailers and customers are preparing for a holiday shopping season like no other. Digital transformation is critical for retailers, especially for the seasonal frontline workers who are critical to creating a stellar shopping experience.

Workforce constraints are a challenge, but communication and collaboration technology offer a unique opportunity for long-lasting, impactful transformation. Orion’s intelligent collaboration platform and push-to-talk 2.0 system is a cloud-based SaaS platform that enables retailers to deploy in a single day, offering rapid scalability. Retailers instantly gain a Voice Operations System of Record, allowing them to optimize operations in real-time.

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Global Mining Review Features Orion on Five Ways to Transform the Frontline Mining Workforce

The global mining industry is thriving. Demand for valuable minerals continues to rise. New technologies in exploration and planning continue to create enormous new opportunities. And the rise of the connected mine is helping global mining companies like ABB prevent equipment downtime, enhance productivity, and keep workers safer.

Ideas like the connected mine showcase how digital transformation will be critical to driving profit, productivity, and safety in the coming years. Notably, McKinsey & Company estimates digitalization could save mining companies $373 billion by 2025.

Mines are ripe with opportunities for digital transformation: automated drilling and heavy equipment, big data, interconnected sensors and drones, remote operation management, 3D printing, and more. Mining companies can amplify the transformative impact of these innovations by adding new technology to keep their workforce productive and safe.

Read the Global Mining Review Article by Orion

Orion’s Sean Timmins shared his insights with Global Mining Review. As Timmins explains,

“Embracing digital transformation and new digital technology provides a long-term path to building resilient businesses focused on improved workforce productivity and safety.”

Innovation plans often overlook a crucial touchpoint: the frontline mining workforce. These teams are often underserved with technology and need collaboration solutions designed with their daily realities in mind.

“Mining enterprises seeking to benefit from digital transformation need to equip their frontline workforce with modern communication technologies designed for these environments. Geologists, surveyors, truck operators, machine operators, mechanics, electricians, technicians, blast crew members, supervisors, and more, all of these frontline mine workers need the ability to communicate and connect to others off and on-site.”

5 Ways Collaboration Technology Transforms Mining Operations

Mining operators that equip their deskless teams with the right collaboration technology can build on its voice-first communication foundation in innovative ways that improve productivity and safety across the frontline mining workforce.

1. Operational command and control: Mine sites are increasingly remote, managed from global operations centers overseeing a distributed workforce from hundreds of miles away. Mining leaders need centralized visibility that connects a distributed workforce and operations to their organization in real time.
2. Increased productivity with process automation: Teams in dangerous work areas must remain heads up and focused on the task at hand. Voice-first collaboration technology enables team members to focus on higher-value tasks and increase productivity by voice-automating routine tasks like SOPs, checklists, and vehicle maintenance requests.Teams automate complex workflows, geofenced workflow triggers, and real-time native language translation.
3. Increased safety in urgent situations: Rapid response and real-time information in urgent situations are mission-critical for the mining industry and key to improving miner safety. Modern collaboration technology helps workers in dynamic situations by providing instant and accurate intelligence with always-on automated panic alarms, man-down alerts, and lone worker safety protocols, which can be automatically or manually triggered by voice commands, events, geofences, or actions.
4. Empowering workers with information: Finding a skilled workforce will remain a challenge for the mining industry, requiring companies to innovate and adapt. Collaboration tools bridge this talent gap by connecting team members with back-end systems, safety protocol guides, SMEs, and resources for quick information retrieval. This ultimately reduces training time and ensures all workers have access to critical information from their frontline point of work on their first day on the job.
5. Seamless operations in edge and challenging environments: Connectivity for push-to-talk (PTT) on smart devices, applications, and browsers will always pose unique challenges for mining organizations operating in remote locations. SaaS-based collaboration solutions enable operations to use 3G, 5G, LTE, Private LTE, Wired Backhaul, Satellite Dish, BGAN, and WiFi. This creates highly reliable communications for remote teams.

Download the Article to Learn More About the 5 Benefits

The Orion Collaboration Platform for Mining Operations

The Orion Collaboration Platform for Mining transforms operational productivity, safety, and compliance with its voice-first technology that connects global mining teams with Push-to-Talk (PTT) voice, text, images, videos, and files at any distance.

Orion provides automated safety alerts and voice-driven checklists that help mining teams strengthen their safety culture and operate more effectively. The platform enables automated compliance procedures, geofenced-triggered notifications, faster emergency response, and more.

Ultimately, global mining enterprises use Orion to gain new ways to drive profit with a safer, more productive workforce.

Learn How Orion Transforms Mining Operations

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Frontline teams know the ability to communicate in groups and one-to-one is critical to productivity and safety. Today’s enterprises are faced with a plethora of bad options.

Further, communication technology for the frontline workforce has a track record of being underinvested, uninspired, and limited to push-to-talk (PTT) without photos, videos, files, and text (not really) sharing.

So how do companies with a deskless workforce know which voice solution is right for them?

Let’s take a look at the options:

• Radios
• Digital radios
• Cell phones
• Push-to-talk (PTT) apps
• Collaboration platforms

We’ll help you understand why all these communication options, except for an advanced voice-first intelligent collaboration platform, are unable to support the needs of today’s enterprises.

Get the Future of Voice at Work E-Book

The Basics: How Do Radios Work?

Radios offer two-way push-to-talk communications between radio receivers, typically on a land mobile radio (LMR) system. Commercial radios require a license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in order to use a designated frequency for two-way communication.

Diagram of a basic LMR system. Source: cisa.gov

Unfortunately, radio technology is very slow to change and is decades behind modern solutions. Radios have limited value and offer an unwieldy form factor with an extremely limited range and low audio quality. In fact, there are at least a dozen reasons radios hold your company back.

A Small Improvement: How Do Digital Radios Work?

Like analog radios, digital radio users still have to purchase FCC licenses. Digital radios operate similarly to their predecessors but conserve LMR spectrum usage by compressing audio. However, this means digital radio audio is low-quality, distorted, and often irritating to those listening.

Even though digital radios might sound innovative, the truth is that they don’t have much more innovation to offer than analog radios. Poor coverage. No process automation. No map display. No situational intelligence. No instant message replay for end users. And no photos, no videos, no files, no easy-to-use text messaging.

Learn the 12 Reasons Radios Hold Your Company Back

The Next Iteration: How Do Push-to-Talk (PTT) Apps Work?

PTT apps were created to be the next evolution of radios. In the mid-1990s, Nextel created one of the first iterations of PTT that worked on cellular networks and connected people at any distance. This feature was initially exciting but quickly overshadowed by smartphones for personal use. However, organizations with a deskless workforce took notice of its utility compared with traditional radios.

Organizations are often drawn to push-to-talk apps because they are instantly scalable, unlike radios. Users are not locked into expensive radio hardware and can instead push-to-talk on any Android or iOS smart device. However, some PTT apps are tied to specific communications providers like AT&T or Verizon. These services lock you into their cellular networks and prevent choice and flexibility.

It’s important to note that most push-to-talk apps perform poorly and provide no path to innovation. Several popular PTT apps notoriously lack encryption, creating large security and compliance risks for organizations.

PTT apps simply don’t do enough to solve the many problems with radios or enable frontline teams to achieve meaningful innovation (like automation, intelligence amplification, and analytics) and digital transformation.

Frankly, frontline teams need so much more than a simple communication point solution that PTT apps provide. That’s where Orion comes in.

What Features and Solutions Should Enterprise PTT Apps Offer?

The best PTT apps don’t just provide communication. Yes, they must work over unlimited distance and provide high-quality audio. They must also be secure, encrypted, and support Android and iOS devices.

To learn more about everything you should consider in a push-to-talk app, take a moment to get the Collaboration Solution Buyers Guide.

Voice for Today’s Enterprise: How Does the Orion PTT and Collaboration Platform Work?

Now more than ever before, leading organizations are turning to collaboration software like Orion to empower their deskless workers, create their connected workforces, and digitally transform frontline teams.

Modern Communications & Multimodal Collaboration

Organizations can collaborate at any distance, on any network, on any device. Orion builds on its high-quality audio PTT abilities with secure multimodal collaboration, including voice, text, photos, videos, and files such as PDFs. The platform also has the highest levels of security with end-to-end-encryption (E2EE). Secure, voice-first, multimodal collaboration is table stakes for connecting a deskless workforce to a digital organization.

Operations Console

Operations centralize control with Orion’s web-based console that provides situational intelligence, mapping, and advanced location services. Management gains real-time visibility to see all worker locations on a single screen. These location services provide analytics that help organizations optimize operations, increase productivity, and improve worker safety.

Once organizations have modernized communications with Orion’s voice-first, multimodal collaboration, they can innovate with process automation, intelligence amplification, and analytics — ultimately creating a voice operations system of record.

Process Automation

Orion’s process automation handles repetitive and routine tasks so the deskless workforce can focus on higher-value work. Orion standardizes a number of processes including routine checklists, safety SOPs, regulatory requirements, lone worker emergencies, and geolocation-based check-ins. With process automation, frontline workers stay hands-free, heads-up, and focused on their job in both routine and urgent situations.

Intelligence Amplification

The Orion platform amplifies employee intelligence by providing real-time context and access to systems, data, and SMEs to dramatically improve worker output, optimize processes, and increase productivity. The frontline workforce can now learn more about new processes and products in real time by connecting them to manuals and best-practice guides — all from their point of work. Intelligence Amplification becomes the path that truly connects the deskless workforce to the rest of the digital enterprise.

Analytics

Orion’s collaboration software enables organizations to optimize and gain insights into the day-to-day operations across the deskless workforce to maximize overall performance. Orion captures 100% of the message stream, including location data, automated processes, and all messages sent and received. This allows managers to measure, optimize, and report performance.

Choosing the Right Voice Solution

Why settle for a lesser voice solution like radios or simple PTT apps?

Orion’s collaboration platform creates a path for true innovation and digitalization for enterprises and their deskless workforces — well beyond anything radios and PTT apps could ever imagine possible.

Learn how Orion’s Collaboration Platform offers more than PTT with unprecedented team voice-first, multimodal collaboration, operational control, process automation, intelligence amplification, analytics, and more.

Learn How Orion Drives Innovation

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How Intelligent Collaboration Solutions Support Facilities Management

Enterprise facilities managers, property managers, and corporate real estate leaders are tasked with efficiently and effectively overseeing assets, buildings, vendors, and campuses. The most successful facilities management leaders expertly maintain their buildings and physical assets while controlling costs.

In addition to overseeing physical facilities, operations managers direct a network of mobile, on-the-go workers dispersed across their properties. This workforce is made up of operations, janitorial staff, technicians, maintenance, security staff, customer service representatives, and more. Often, facilities teams are a mix of staff and contractors that need to seamlessly communicate and work together.

Learn about Orion for Facilities Management

Managers coordinating and overseeing a dispersed facilities workforce need to be aware of the top trends and latest innovations that improve workforce collaboration. The reality is that most field teams waste time trying to communicate over multiple devices like radios, limited push-to-talk (PTT) apps, mobile phones, and inconvenient desktop computers away from the point of work. Today’s facilities management workforce needs a better alternative.

They need the ability to communicate with a multimodal experience on the go, including voice, text, photo, video, and files. They also need a voice-first, always-on, scalable solution to improve collaboration and employee productivity.

Here are the top 5 challenges Facilities Management can overcome with better collaboration technology:

#1 Operational Oversight

The facilities management workforce operates dispersed across buildings, campuses, and even multiple sites. Managers of dispersed operations need to dispatch teams that efficiently tackle the most business-critical tasks like security concerns, maintenance, or cleaning. They also need to ensure those tasks are completed on time and to the level of the organization’s standards.

Orion’s collaboration technology with dispatch and task management helps managers assign tasks and monitor progress in one view. The web-based Orion Dispatch Console provides operational control, voice dispatch, and location tracking services in any web browser — enabling dispatchers and operations managers to work from any location.

#2 Dynamic and Urgent Situation Management

Dynamic situations like maintenance or cleaning requests and urgent or safety-related incidents can happen at any time. Both evolving and urgent situations require the ability to centralize management, share critical information, and locate relevant personnel quickly.

Managers use Orion’s collaboration solutions to communicate real-time information, view worker locations, and deploy immediate assistance. Operations management and team supervisors can create ad hoc, 1:1, or limited group environments that enable managers to connect directly with relevant workers.

#3 Visibility of Team Members

Advanced location services are table stakes for today’s facilities managers overseeing a dispersed workforce. Supervisors need to immediately know where their team members are in real-time in one view.

Orion’s intelligent collaboration solution delivers real-time location and contextual data for facilities management teams so they always know where their employees are, what they’re doing, and how they’re performing. Detailed location information can track workers indoors, across various floors, and even at subterranean levels. Orion’s heat mapping also tracks employee location history and productivity so managers can measure results and optimize future tasks based on inputs like foot traffic, task completion, and compliance protocols.

Learn more about The Orion Collaboration Platform for Facilities Management

#4 Increased Productivity

Today’s facilities management teams must focus on reducing costs, increasing staff productivity, and improving operational efficiency. Automated processes help optimize operations and reduce costs by promoting protocol compliance, documenting and archiving processes, and automating routine tasks.

Process automation reduces or eliminates time-consuming tasks like manually logging activities. Janitorial staff can use photos to document rooms cleaned. Security staff can use voice-automated checklists to confirm access points are closed and secure at the end of operating hours. And maintenance staff can record property damage with text, photo, or video that records relevant information.

Automating these processes promotes heads-up work and frees personnel to focus on higher-value tasks. Additional workflows like language translation bots also support multilingual teams, ensuring that workers receive commands in their native language.

In each of these examples, the Orion collaboration platform logs and documents the incident or starts an automated workflow and provides workers with their next steps or tasks. Managers are able to analyze employee request patterns and response times to improve productivity and drive insight into future planning.

#5 Safety and Compliance

Safety is key for the distributed facilities management workforce. Collaboration platforms use automation to improve the safety of distributed or lone workers. In the event of an emergency, workers can trigger multi-function workflows like automated safety check-ins, lone-worker protocols, incapacitation monitoring, and location breach alerts. Trigger words like “fire” or “help-help” start workflows that deploy resources or alert managers.

Compliance is also critical for enterprise facilities managers. Operations management needs the ability to review, analyze, and evaluate information to improve safety and prevent future incidents. Orion records, stores, and archives all messages for review, analysis, and future compliance needs.

The Orion Solution

Orion addresses each of the top 5 facilities management challenges with the best collaboration solution for facilities management leaders and their frontline workforce. Facilities management teams that modernize communications with Orion’s intelligent collaboration platform gain the benefits of digital transformation and create more effective, productive, and safer teams.

Ultimately, the Orion Collaboration Platform for Facilities Management creates an operations system of record. Orion records and archives a real-time and complete view of operations so that facilities management leaders can succeed.

Learn about Orion for Facilities Management

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Latest Design of Mobile and Tablet App Helps Enterprises Transform Their Deskless Workforces

We’re passionate about helping enterprises rethink collaboration for frontline operating teams. Our award-winning, first-of-its-kind mobile app and new tablet-optimized app starts this journey by enabling enterprises to harness the power of deskless collaboration seamlessly at the point of work.

Today, we’re excited to share the next version of our mobile and tablet push-to-talk (PTT) app.

This new user experience retains and builds on Orion’s renowned commitment to an intuitive user experience. Frontline operations teams will now see a bold new visual and functional design when they access Orion on their mobile or tablet devices. We also reimagined and improved our core messaging experience and introduced greater functionality for groups.

Simplified Views: A Bold New Mobile Design

The new version of the Orion app was born out of our resolve to prioritize the information users need when they’re on the go. Now, the navigation provides access to the exact information users need fast in this sleek, simple design.

How? A new tab bar.

This tab bar now organizes the most important information onto four separate screens: Log, Team, Map, and Settings. The Team view also makes it easier to see which team members are online and active.

Orion’s industry-leading, high-quality audio PTT is now easier to use than ever. The new design means users can access the PTT button from any screen, including the Message Log. Now, users have access to Orion’s instant voice functionality and innovative features like process automation, intelligence amplification, and analytics without switching screens.

We love this new user experience and know you and your deskless workforce will too.

Single-Screen Views: Now Optimized for Tablets

We’re excited to also offer this new version with app optimization for tablets.

The new tablet-optimized app provides an even better view of the message log, which users are active, and where their team members are located — all on a single screen. And, like mobile phone users, tablet users can easily access the PTT button from any screen.

“Many of our customers depend on tablet devices to provide their fleet and mobile workers with large, easy-to-read maps,” said Ellen Juhlin, Orion Head of Product. “We paid special attention to our customer’s most important use cases and enhanced the tablet interface to suit the needs of teams doing these critical deskless jobs.”

Messaging: A Unified Experience

Orion’s Message Log captures each voice, text, file, video, and picture message and allows for flexible communications suited to any situation. Now, the Message Log is the first screen users will see.

This move makes the Message Log more accessible, enabling message replay without needing to navigate to another screen.

“The new look makes the app even more functional. Instead of flipping to another screen to initiate your message, the PTT button is at the forefront on every screen.”
– Michael Keith, Belle Haven Country Club

Administrator Controls: Greater Security and Flexibility for Enterprises

This new modular interface gives administrators increased flexibility on how to make Orion work for their teams. Now, operations managers more easily control and configure the information their deskless workforce have access to. This flexible configuration reduces complexity and increases focus for employees by only providing the information they need.

For example, managers with employees can hide the Map, Member List, or both for workers who only communicate 1:1 with the Orion Command Center instead of a team or group. Alternatively, management can provide access to the Map, Member List, and Message Log to enable real-time context, situational awareness, and operational control to workers like dispatchers. Organizations are assured each worker segment only accesses the information relevant to their role.

We know every enterprise operates uniquely. This new version prioritizes the flexible and secure permissions enterprises need to make Orion work for their frontline operations.

The Orion Collaboration Platform

We’re extremely pleased to make available the next evolution of the Orion platform. As always, we continue to work with our customers and incorporate new innovations that make each version of Orion even better than the last.

Learn more about the Orion Push-to-Talk App or contact us for a demonstration.

Orion Study Finds Over Three-Quarters of Security Organizations Need Modern Collaboration Tools and Automation

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2021 — Orion Labs, Inc., the leading voice-first intelligent collaboration platform that empowers deskless workers, today released a study citing that 77% of frontline security teams believe they need to upgrade their communication solutions and 90% of teams believe automation would increase their productivity.

Orion conducted the survey with over 190 security professionals from a wide range of industries, including retail, manufacturing, health care, hospitality, government, energy, and property management. Of those professionals, 42% use radios, 27% use cell phones, 28% use multiple devices, and 3% use social apps and other means as their main communication tools for their security teams.

“Orion’s survey results coincide with the problems we see in the market and the solution the Orion Security Collaboration Platform provides,” said Michael Schwartz, Orion Chief Marketing Officer. “Orion created its voice-first intelligent collaboration platform to address the problems security teams face today and well into the future with advanced offerings like location services, security process automation, and situational intelligence amplification.”

Of the 77% of security professionals that indicated they need to upgrade their communication solutions, 68% believe they need to upgrade their solutions in the next three years or less.

“It’s no secret security teams have needed a better communication solution,” said Ellen Juhlin, Orion Head of Product. “Orion provides security teams with unified, secure collaboration on one platform. Orion’s end-to-end encrypted collaboration solution is multimodal, so teams can communicate with voice, text, photos, videos, and files on any device.”

Of the survey respondents, almost all (90%) indicated that automation would increase their productivity.

“We use Orion’s advanced bot technology and workflow engine to provide automation for both routine and dynamic processes to improve security team productivity and incident response,” said Greg Albrecht, Orion Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. “With the Orion Security Collaboration Platform, security professionals can automate processes and trigger workflows, such as proactively calling for help in emergencies, automating safety check-ins, monitoring for incapacitation, and setting up geofence location breach alerts.”

These findings and more were detailed in a recent Security Magazine webinar hosted by Orion, titled “5 Reasons Radios Hold Security Teams Back and the Modern Alternative.”

About Orion Labs, Inc.

Orion is the leading voice-first, intelligent platform that empowers deskless workers by enabling real-time team collaboration, process automation, location mapping, and access to enterprise systems to improve workforce productivity, safety and compliance, and customer engagement.

Orion holds 55 patents that support its award-winning solutions, has been named an IDC Innovator, and was awarded a Top 10 Industrial IoT Solution Provider 2020 by Manufacturing Technology Insights. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by leading investors. For more information, visit orionlabs.io.

Stay in touch with Orion | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Blog

Media contact

Jacqueline Wasem
Orion
415-800-5467
press@orionlabs.io

Discover How Orion Digitally Transforms Physical Security Teams

Security Magazine recently hosted a webinar featuring guest speakers Orion CEO Greg Taylor and Co-Founder and CTO Greg Albrecht on how physical security operations enterprises can harness modern technology and gain the benefits of digitalization.

Watch the Security Magazine Webinar

The security landscape is complex and ever-changing. Physical security teams are often distributed, cover a wide range of functions, and are limited in their abilities to engage with their organization’s security operations center (SOC).

Leading physical security teams know they must approach these operational challenges with a modern collaboration platform that creates a real-time system of record. However, too many of today’s security teams still rely on outdated radios or multiple devices to communicate.

Security Organizations Need to Harness Modern Technology

Today’s security teams know they need a unified, secure platform for real-time communication that offers process automation with voice-activated checklists, SOPs, compliance forms, and checkpoints. Managers and team leaders need visibility and control to create effective, productive, and safe teams. And security enterprises need rich analytics that measure and optimize their entire security operations for continuous improvement.

Then why do so many security teams still rely on outdated technology and processes?

The SecOps Digital Journey

Legacy communications tools used to be fully analog and reliant on radios that created siloed, disconnected organizations. As security teams realize this system no longer meets their needs, they often tend to naturally migrate toward multi-device strategies. Multi-device operations generally consist of an unsanctioned or unplanned mix of radios, smartphones, desktops, PTT apps, and apps like WhatsApp — all brought together to supplement and fill in the communications gaps caused by an analog radio program.

Orion helps security organizations that are ready to modernize and move on from the disconnected, multi-device communications systems that are often not secure and non-compliant with organizational IT requirements and protocols. Organizations immediately benefit by augmenting their communications and implementing the Orion platform. Orion then starts the process of building true team collaboration with security process automation and improved audio quality.

After taking this initial step to augment communication, our customers begin to realize the innovative benefits of our platform and a fully digital organization. Ultimately, Orion becomes the operations system of record. Security teams are integrated into operations and have access to the information they need to perform their duties at their point of work. The digital transformation journey has truly begun.

Orion bridges each of these steps, enabling security organizations to move away from legacy systems, modernize operations, and then truly innovate with digital transformation.

Watch the webinar to learn how your security operations can benefit from starting a digital journey with a voice-first intelligent collaboration platform.

Watch the Security Magazine Webinar

The Orion Collaboration Platform for Security

After the first steps to modernize communications, security enterprises unlock innovation with Orion’s complete approach to security operations and creating a real-time voice operations system of record.

Modernizing Communications with Multi-Modal Collaboration: Communicate securely with voice, text, and visual media across any device, interoperate with LMR and VoIP bridges

Modernizing Communications with Operational Control: Coordinate and centralize operational visibility, management, and decision-making to enhance productivity

Innovating Operations with Process Automation: Automate simple or complex processes and workflows to enable security teams to focus on higher-value duties

Innovating Operations with Intelligence Amplification: Amplify situational intelligence by providing real-time context and access to systems, data, and SMEs to dramatically improve productivity

Innovating Operations with Analytics: Optimize and gain insights into the day-to-day operations across security teams to maximize overall performance

Watch the webinar to learn how the Orion Collaboration Platform for Security can transform security operations.

Watch the Security Magazine Webinar

What’s Covered in “5 Reasons Radios Hold Security Teams Back & The Modern Alternative

Throughout this 45-minute Security Magazine webinar, “5 Reasons Radios Hold Security Teams & The Modern Alternative,” Orion Labs CEO Greg Taylor and Co-Founder and CTO Greg Albrecht will share why radios and multiple devices just don’t cut it for today’s physical security teams — and how to harness modern collaboration technology built for leading security enterprises.

Watch it instantly any time (even at 2x speed).

In this Security Magazine webinar, you’ll learn how to:

• Provide situational intelligence and emergency preparedness for security teams
• Discover the advantages of a voice-first, intelligent collaboration platform
• Increase productivity through automation
• Improve people and property protection with advanced location services
• Review how other security teams have succeeded with an intelligent collaboration platform

Watch the Security Magazine Webinar

You Might Also Like:

• Article: 6 Reasons Radios Are Unable to Support Today’s Physical Security Teams
• 3 Reasons Orion’s Multimodal Frontline Collaboration Platform is Critical for Operating a Digital Organization With a Connected Deskless Workforce
• E-book: 12 Reasons Radios Are Holding Your Company Back
• Safe Return to Work: Empowering Deskless Workers with Orion and IBM Watson
• Infographic: 23 Facts About Collaboration Software for the Deskless Workforce
• E-book: The Future of Voice at Work
• Manufacturing Technology Insights Names Orion Labs “Top 10 Industrial IoT Solution Providers for 2020

2021 Workforce Productivity and Collaboration Trends for the Deskless Workforce

451 Research, the leading analyst in topics and technologies driving digital transformation, issued a new report on digital transformation for deskless workers.

As 451 notes, “the deskless workforce is a critical component of a wide range of vertical markets and use cases — including security, facilities management, retail, energy and mining, transportation, hospitality, manufacturing, and health care — but they have been largely underserved by business communications and collaboration tools.”

Get the Business Impact Brief

Enterprises must consider how they manage, empower, and connect their deskless workforce with a business communications infrastructure that also addresses compliance, end-to-end encryption, and mobile device capabilities.

The brief affirms that business conditions are increasing the importance of including deskless workers in digital transformation initiatives, stating “conditions are making secure remote collaboration a top priority for organizations that aim to differentiate based on their digital transformation leadership – ahead of other initiatives including risk mitigation, ensuring continuous uptime, modernizing and mobilizing business applications, and supporting different cloud platforms.”

Download 451 Research’s Business Impact Brief to discover:

• How collaboration software enables productivity and an agile operating approach
• Why voice-first, intelligent tools are key for frontline workers
• The enormous cost savings achieved with effective collaboration
• How improved communications transforms business operations
• And so much more

Get the Business Impact Brief

You might also like:

• Article: 4 Ways to Include Deskless Logistics Workers in Your Digital Strategy
• E-book: 12 Reasons Radios Are Holding Your Company Back
• Three Ways Collaboration Tools Improve Worker Safety and Compliance in Heavy Industries
• Three Ways a Voice-First Multimodal Collaboration Platform Improves Team Operations, Performance, and Communications for Heavy Industries
• Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, a Fairmont Managed Hotel, selects Orion Labs as its voice-first multimodal collaboration platform
• Maplewood Senior Living selects Orion Labs as its collaboration platform for newest Inspīr Carnegie Hill property in New York City
• Safe Return to Work: Empowering Deskless Workers with Orion and IBM Watson
• Transportation and Logistics Communications Need to Move Beyond Push-to-Talk and Radios

Orion Featured in Inbound Logistics on Why Leaders Must Embrace a Connected Deskless Worker Strategy

Growing competition, supply chain constraints, and demand shifts increase pressure on logistics companies to protect long-term profits by building resilient organizations. To do this, innovative leaders turn to digital transformation initiatives, but these initiatives often neglect the manifold opportunities in transforming how the deskless workforce operates.

Inbound Logistics recently featured Orion Labs and the collaboration platform’s unique ability to transform deskless work for the logistics industry.

Read the Inbound Logistics article by Orion Labs

Digital Transformation for Frontline Work

Orion Labs’ Senior Solutions Consultant Sean Timmins explains:

“Digitalization solutions must consider the distributed nature of their supply chain counterparts. Imagine a truck driver enters a geofenced area. Just by entering the area, an automated workflow can start that alerts receiving to the inbound location, sends the driver information on which dock they should use, and deploys unloading resources to meet them. Further automated SOPs can support the unloading crew in tracking and logging the truck’s inventory, updating warehouse systems in real-time, and reducing the need for manual data transfer.”

Supporting Deskless Logistics Workers

In the article, Timmins covers four reasons that demonstrate how logistics teams benefit from collaboration solutions:

1. Amplification of the worker’s ability
2. Automation of routine and procedural processes
3. Support in dynamic and urgent environments
4. Connecting workers on any device, anywhere

Innovation for the Logistics Industry

The Orion platform enables process automation and intelligence amplification that turn deskless workers into an unmatched advantage wherever they operate. Timmins notes:

“Current communication technology is often not designed to provide deskless workers with access to greater team collaboration, critical information, or automated processes. Innovative organizations must consider new collaboration solutions that drive the digital transformation of the entire supply chain and the logistics workforce.”

Get the article to learn more

The Orion Solution

Deskless workers often rely on out-dated radios, PTT devices, or even cell phones to communicate with their teams, but they need heads-up technology supporting their ability to collaborate while driving vehicles, using heavy machinery, or loading stock. Orion’s collaboration platform helps logistics enterprises first modernize and then digitally transform how their deskless workforce operates.

Orion offers deskless workers the ability to access greater team collaboration, critical information, and automated processes that increase efficiency, productivity, and safety.

Learn more about Orion’s collaboration platform here.

You might also like:

• Transportation and Logistics Communications Need to Move Beyond Push-to-Talk and Radios
• E-book: 12 Reasons Radios Are Holding Your Company Back
• Three Ways Collaboration Tools Improve Worker Safety and Compliance in Heavy Industries
• Three Ways a Voice-First Multimodal Collaboration Platform Improves Team Operations, Performance, and Communications for Heavy Industries
• Safe Return to Work: Empowering Deskless Workers with Orion and IBM Watson
• Infographic: 23 Facts About Collaboration Software for the Deskless Workforce
• 3 “Brass Tacks” Reasons Radios Don’t Prepare Companies for the Future

Deskless workers are tasked with executing their jobs at the point of work — whether that’s serving customers, protecting company executives and property, driving vehicles, using heavy machinery, loading stock in a warehouse, or operating in the field.

But on average, deskless workers must switch between 4.5 different communications devices or methods to complete their tasks. Deskless workers would be more productive and safer if they had a single solution that provides a multimodal user experience.

Orion leads the way in delivering one interface, over a high-performance cloud-native architecture, to enable comprehensive best practices for deskless work. With this offering, Orion’s platform supports the digitalization journey for organizations by enabling their deskless workforce to communicate with a multimodal experience on the go — creating a truly connected workforce.

Here are three ways Orion’s multimodal frontline collaboration platform helps digital organizations support a connected deskless workforce:

1. Orion Offers the Multimodal User Experience Required for Best Practices in Frontline Work

Deskless workers require multiple modes of collaboration that support how work gets done on the frontline at a given moment. They need the option to communicate and collaborate via voice, text, files, video, or picture, with all of these options available to them at all times, on one device, in one app, and in one user experience.

Orion’s intelligent collaboration platform offers deskless workers and their organizations the best practices in multimodal collaboration with optimized high-quality communication methods. This includes the highest audio quality available on the market as well as extremely low latency push-to-talk (PTT) that works over low bandwidth connections.

Multimodal communication is critical for deskless workers operating in dynamic environments. Here are a few examples of where multimodal functionality is required:

• A maintenance worker needs the ability to send photos of a part they need so centralized support can locate the correct item and deliver it to their location.
• A manager wants to securely share information via text to their team without requiring them to remember on the fly or write something down when they may be in the middle of a workstream.
• A construction worker with a ruggedized device uses voice to ask a question of his manager who is working remotely on a computer with the web dispatch console.
• A security guard needs to share a photo or video of a person or object that poses a potential security risk with their team members so they can be on high alert.
• A cleaning crew completed a task in a particular room or a warehouse worker finished restocking inventory and wants to provide photo evidence that it is complete.

2. Orion’s Multimodal Collaboration Platform Means Deskless Workers Only Need One Device.

Orion supports the best practice of providing access to multimodal collaboration within one application on one device.

Deskless workers often need to use multiple devices to achieve their collaboration requirements. They should not need to switch between one device for voice communications and their phone to send text or pictures. Orion’s users can choose from a breadth of supported device types to suit every possible deskless workforce and worker job, including browsers, tablets, push-to-talk (PTT) ruggedized phones, and mobile phones.

Orion’s innovative approach supports the broadest range of iOS and Android smart devices and the ability to interoperate with LMR radios and VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol).

3. Orion is Always On. Always Secure. Always Available on Any Network.

Other PTT apps can do multimedia, but carrier networks that offer PTT apps often lock users into their own networks, restricting the availability of multimedia to one device and one location. This doesn’t account for the manager who may need to check in on a personal or alternate device when working from home or offsite. Orion, however, supports the highest levels of quality on any network.

Orion customers can use any network for their communications, including LTE (5G-ready), private LTE (CBRS), Wi-Fi, satellite, and mesh. Users have the always-on ability to communicate with any size team via unlimited groups, 1:1 communication, or mass communication over any distance, including on-site, on the road, across town, or around the globe.

Regardless of network or delivery system, each multimedia message is fully encrypted with enterprise-grade end-to-end encryption (E2EE), supporting the highest standards of data security. Orion’s multimodal collaboration platform delivers the highest security and encryption standards that today’s digital enterprises need.

Why Deskless Workers Need Orion

Voice-first, multimodal collaboration is critical for ensuring the deskless workforce can do their jobs well and without roadblocks. Multimodal collaboration is also the first step in building a connected workforce, and ultimately delivering digital transformation across the enterprise.

Orion is the leading voice-first intelligent platform that supports enterprises on this digital transformation journey. The Orion frontline multimodal collaboration platform empowers deskless workers by enabling real-time team collaboration, process automation, location mapping, and access to enterprise systems to improve workforce productivity, safety and compliance, and customer engagement.

Learn more about Orion here.

You might also like:

• E-book: 12 Reasons Radios Are Holding Your Company Back
• Three Ways Collaboration Tools Improve Worker Safety and Compliance in Heavy Industries
• Three Ways a Voice-First Multimodal Collaboration Platform Improves Team Operations, Performance, and Communications for Heavy Industries
• Maplewood Senior Living selects Orion Labs as its collaboration platform for newest Inspīr Carnegie Hill property in New York City
• Safe Return to Work: Empowering Deskless Workers with Orion and IBM Watson
• Transportation and Logistics Communications Need to Move Beyond Push-to-Talk and Radios