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Frontline Mobility Edge
Frontline Mobility Edge takes a look at mobility in the enterprise, focusing on workforce devices, business applications, and the technology behind them.
Frontline Mobility Edge
From Barcode to Digital Identity: The Future of Warehouse Tracking & RFID (feat. Dan Quagliana)
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Most warehouses still run on 1D barcodes, but the economics and regulations have finally shifted.
In this episode of the Frontline Mobility Edge, Brett Cooper sits down with Dan Quagliana from Seagull Software (BarTender) to break down what's actually driving RFID adoption, how track and trace is evolving beyond simple inventory counts, and why 110 billion labels per year is now an AI-ready data asset.
→ Why companies are consolidating labeling systems to cut costs in an unstable economy
→ How FSMA, MOCRA, and the EU Digital Product Passport are forcing supply chain visibility
→ The GS1 Sunrise initiative and the shift from 1D to 2D barcodes by 2027
→ RFID tag costs dropping below 5 cents and what that means for mid-market adoption
→ Real-world deployments: Chipotle's RFID food safety program with Zebra and Avery
→ Getting started with RFID track and trace for under $10,000
→ How BarTender is building agentic AI interfaces on top of labeling data
Whether you manage a warehouse, distribution center, or retail supply chain, the labeling layer is becoming the foundation for operational intelligence, not just identification.
Learn more about BlueFletch: https://bluefletch.com
Learn more about BarTender: https://bartendersoftware.com
Request a demo: https://bluefletch.com/demo
Welcome And Dan’s Background
SPEAKER_01I'm Brett Cooper. This is the Frontline Mobility Edge, and we discuss the latest in mobile device technologies and how they're shaping the frontline landscape business. Thank you for joining us. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Frontline Mobility Edge. I'm Brett Cooper here, joined by Dan Quagliana. Did I pronounce it right?
SPEAKER_00Qualiana. The G is kind of silent.
SPEAKER_01You've told me that's like you told me that's like like for the last 10 years. All right.
SPEAKER_00Um you get a last name like that, you have to be patient with people.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Um, Dan and I are going to talk a bit about uh technology around um labeling, track and trades, RFID, a lot of the AIDC pieces that happen around products as they move through the warehouse and how you actually track and know what's happening there. Dan, thank you for being on today. A quick intro on Dan. So I've I've known Dan for it's over 10 years now, I think. Um when you're he was formerly at uh Zebra Technologies in their printer and software group, doing a lot of the cutting edge innovation pieces there, um, and has since moved to bartender, which is a part of SQL Scientific or SQL Software now. Um I call it bartender because it's easier to say and I like bartenders. Um more fun. I think you lead the uh I think what is it, the uh the software engineering group there and help out with a lot of the uh the product pieces on the bartender side and also some of the pieces around Mojiks, which I'll I'll get you to talk about that in a second. And then in addition to that, you uh lead, I think there's some groups you lead for AIM, which is a standards body. Can you give me like the 30-second pitch of what that is?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you bet there's a visibility technologies group under AIM and what we do there. I'm the I chair that group, and we're really focused in on looking at what's going on within the industry, the AIDC industry, around visibility technologies. So whether that's new government mandates, new technologies coming out, um, really trying to come together cross-organizationally around some of those trends. And um, you know, I think we're gonna we'll probably talk about some of those regulations that are going through, but you know, we work very closely with the US FDA as they're passing um some new rules and even give feedback before they've fully published those. So it's a great opportunity to kind of get an early view into some of the trends happening within the industry.
SPEAKER_01That group is it's different companies that come together as an industry body and then actually provide that feedback and as opposed to the government trying to figure things out on their own, which would never be uh never be ideal.
SPEAKER_00Correct. Yeah, the that group AIM, uh, it's uh you know a membership group of a number of different corporations coming together to share that broad industry expertise, you know, whether it's software, hardware, services, you know, other types of companies that really know um this AIDC space. Um we have a lot of folks coming together, you know, work with GS1 as well, um, who has a strong uh connection with AIM also. So it's it's been really fun um getting to meet a lot of people across a broad stretch of the uh landscape uh as well. So really good uh organization.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Your your background, you're a computer engineer by trade, a northwestern guy, is that right?
SPEAKER_00That's correct. Yeah, I started out as a developer and uh you know, five years in was like, you know, I think probably actually writing the code isn't the uh the the uh best alignment with my skills. So I started getting into other areas, program management, and then really focused in on working with independent software vendors. So trying to help guide software companies as they're doing integrations with hardware. Um a lot of my time was at Zebra Technologies. So, you know, how do people engage with Zebra's products? First the printers, then mobile computers, scanners, RFID. Uh, and then that expanded into broader developer relations. Um, and then I started getting into product and product management and you know, helped launch a data services group, some uh different developer tools that the company was doing. And then my last group there was within the services organization and working on uh data analytics um and managed services uh for the group. And now over at Seagull Software, really focusing on bartender. Um and you know, bartender's really here to help companies. You know, it's focused in on labeling, but really it's as you're doing that labeling, you're establishing a digital identity of a good.
How BarTender Started And Scaled
SPEAKER_01And so helping I guess before you talk about the where where it is now, it'd be useful to give some context of where it started from. So I've known the bartend product for I guess six or seven years, but maybe I feel like there was a thing it solved for seven years ago that has evolved to what it is now. But I can maybe talk about that journey of, and I know you read Zebra, but you also worked with Bartender at the time, but maybe talk about where it started uh and give some context, uh probably help color what where it is now.
SPEAKER_00You bet. So bartender is about a 40-year-old product and really was created to help um people be able to create, design, and manage the printing of labels. So initially started out as a Windows application. You have a UI where you can design and lay out what that label is. So you can here's where text should go, here's where the barcode, here's where images and different lines and shapes. You connect that in with other types of data. So whether you're connecting to a back-end ERP, to uh an Excel spreadsheet or whatnot, and then really facilitate companies that are doing printing of those labels. And you know, with the history the bartender has um used across large enterprise, mid-size, and small businesses to the extent that we have over 250,000 customers at this point. We sell through a channel, so we have over 5,000 uh partners, but the platform is creating over 110 billion labels every year for our customer base. So just a massive volume of labels that are being printed and designed and managed through that system.
Labels Beyond Barcodes And Compliance
SPEAKER_01Um those labels go on. I I guess in the warehouse, or is it boxes, is it actual individual SKUs and products? Like what's the mix of where barcode labels end up getting applied?
SPEAKER_00You know, it's interesting. We were just doing some analytics around what is in the templates and what's going on. And what we found was uh a number that was surprising to me. 60% of the labels had barcodes on them. I thought that was going to be like a 90%. Um, but what we saw is there's actually a lot of compliance documentation and other things that people are creating. Um, so there's document management and creation that's done through bartender as well. So it's not all just labels, but even then within the labels, we see that across the board. So whether it's um, you know, from you know, as we look across that supply chain, you have your manufacturers that are first creating a good. So you're creating um, whether it's medication or electronics, someone's generally putting some kind of label on that good. Then that goes into other packaging. That packaging gets another label. Um, when it's shipped, it's getting another label. Received, people are all often giving some new kind of lot batch serial number, or not uh lot and batch, but um some other kind of unique tracking number so that in that new location they can better track where it is. Um, so really we see across the whole supply chain, all the way through retail, and then with the customer buying, a lot of different labels end up getting put on. So whether that's the individual item for some of that item level traceability, or it could be a palette or you know, a larger group of goods.
SPEAKER_01You said 60%. I uh that number seems really low to me.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that was that was the uh the view that I had as well. So we're digging into that to better understand it. Um, I think that you know we have a few customers that do uh an extremely large volume, and you know, they were creating, you know, as I said, just kind of some some uh more documents to better kind of you know, for regulatory purposes, keep track of what was um what was created so they can line things up. We do see you know a lot of people create some human readable um components as well, so just a lot of text. Um, but I think that you know PDF creation and document creation was an area that is, you know, I've been here at Seagull for a year and a half, so still learning some of the intricacies of the business, but that was one that really stood out to me that was uh um different from expected.
From Labels To Track And Trace
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that I guess the human readable side, like Bill Laden, like the you know, labeling things what they are, that makes sense. And uh, I know one of the things that Siegel has done in the last couple years is a merger with Mojiks, which is tracking and tracing a lot of those things as we move through. Can you talk a bit about that acquisition and what that side of the business does now?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So, you know, as we look at that initial label being put on something, you're creating that digital identity of that good. Um, that good then needs to be tracked throughout its entire lifecycle and all across the supply chain. And that's the area that that Mojiks business specialized in. And so what we did um looking at, you know, how does how does this align with bartender in our business? Um, we really wanted to take the solution that has, you know, hundreds of different enterprise grade customers and create something that is um channel friendly for our partners and can be repeatedly sold. And so what we did, we took that Mojiks solution and we kind of rebranded it and repackaged it into something that we're calling bartender track and trace. And today we have um multiple tiers of that product. Uh, we're really leading with our bartender track and trace essentials, which is more of a mid-size business inventory management, shipping, receiving, tracking type of solution. And then we have an enterprise tier as well, where we're working very closely with companies in warehousing, distribution, retail. They are working with some of their suppliers to be able to understand what goods are coming in. They can validate what's received, um, what's how it's managed within their facilities and when it's outbound as well. So ultimately being able to again track that whole life cycle of the product. And so, you know, we launched bartender track and trace back in July and you know, really excited to see some of the response. Um, and I guess one thing I didn't mention, um, track and trace does support barcodes and RFID, but it's really optimized for RFID. So we're having a lot of fun getting going deep within that RFID infrastructure and seeing some of the growth that's within that market as well.
SPEAKER_01Do you of that 110 billion, do you have a billion labels you guys did last year? Do you have a general sense of how many were RFID enabled?
SPEAKER_00Um let's see, off the top of my head, you know, it is not um the majority, definitely. Um, you know, barcode is still kind of the the top area. And even within barcodes, we would we are still seeing 1D barcodes as the uh um kind of the number one majority of what we see within barcodes, but you know, growing 2D, growing RFID. So off the top of my head, I'm not quite recalling what percent, but um, you know, I think it's somewhere between five and ten percent of the the labels produced are in that RFID space. And that's something as we look over time, we are seeing that uptick. And we're seeing the number of printers connected with the system that are RFID enabled growing at a faster pace as well.
Tariffs Drive Standardization And Efficiency
SPEAKER_01Still, even at 5%, it's still an incredibly large number of uh of products. I guess the the first topic area I want to dive into with you is just the I'm gonna I think we termed it as the the the printer market in unstable economy. So we're in this is being recorded in the beginning ish of 2026, where we've had I would say a year and a half of tariffs, um, which have disrupted a lot of like where does stuff get made, where does it get moved to, how do you get it across borders? Um and then we've also had a couple um I guess uh economic things around uh oil and conflicts in the Middle East, things like that. But a lot of this has created uh instability in the economy, is what a lot of people perceive it as. So one of the things I'm always interested is when I talk to companies, is how has this changed your customers' buying patterns? Are they doing more with less? Are they uh trying to move facilities? And I guess with that, like, you know, how has the actual economy impacted the the printer market and people putting labels on things and moving things around? What have you seen there?
SPEAKER_00So it's actually been very interesting working with especially some of the global companies and seeing how they manage their labeling. A lot of companies have less centralized manufacturing processes and mandates than you would expect. A lot of companies may have different locations where they have one set of tooling, one set of processes that they do there, and then another location does things very differently. One of the changes that we are seeing now, because there's this much tighter view, um, companies needing to be a lot more efficient, we're starting to see a little bit more, you know, kind of oversight to how can we make sure that you know we're not using 10 different processes, 10 different types of software. Can we go down into a few so that we can drive more efficiencies? We can see the businesses running more effectively. Um, and so that's something that you know we've been really trying to work with those customers to say, you know, yeah, we started here and we've seen great success. Let's build on that. Let's start working with some of these other locations so that we can align and make sure we're driving some of that commonality. So that's been a good area of growth for us, that we've been able to see growth within individual customers we have, um, as well as you know, the broader market saying, you know, we really need to have a lot more efficiency because there's less margin based on what's happening with tariffs. We're seeing costs rise based on price of oil and other things. So therefore, we need to be able to, they need to drive their internal costs down. So whether it's you know just process-based efficiency or reducing loss, you know, all over the business. Um we actually, so I would say last year we saw some market responses that were saying top line revenue growth was a high focus. And this year, what we're hearing from customers is kind of kind of back to that, how do we gain more efficiency?
SPEAKER_01And then this leads in, I think, well into our second topic. But before we hop into that, like so you would say that right now the cost cutting, so looking at tracking things more efficiently and um knowing where product is, having less product loss is really the big driver for you guys of why people are labeling and then adding track and trace.
FSMA 204 And Other Mandates
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um, definitely reduction of loss, increased efficiency of operations, um, greater visibility to the operations as well. Those are all things really driving change within our customer base.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's that's a good segue into the second topic that I wanted to get your um visibility into, which is the track and trace components. I know, and you mentioned this at the at the top of the discussion, but um, there are new standards around um, I think food safety, there's standards around a lot of the pharmaceuticals and healthcare. There's even standards on things that are ethically sourced. Um, and you need to have visibility tracking on those. But like what are you seeing actually driving um the increase of the adoption of track and trace amongst your clients?
SPEAKER_00Um we really are seeing regulatory changes being a big driver. Um that's kind of a double-edged sword because um oftentimes companies, when there's a regulatory need, it's a mandate, they must follow it, but then they are looking to do the lightest investment possible. Whereas return on investment and business impact is really where they are able to justify spending. So trying to find the balance between the two is how we we really try to approach these. But ultimately, when we look at uh the different things you mentioned, so whether it's Food Safety Modernization Act in the US, um, a new one that came up in the US is MoCRA, which is focused on the cosmetics industry that the US FDA is driving, the EU with digital product passport. Really all all of these are, you know, they're really focused in on safety. Um so there are problems in the industry that um that are needing to be addressed. Um unfortunately, some of those problems, so if we just look at FSMA, food safety. So how do you put a price on a contamination of food and then the impact to customers, right? That can be.
SPEAKER_01So FSMA is the I think you said Food Safety Act, Rule 204. I think it's um companies need to be able to trace down to a carton level um for products. And I think that's a lot of it's driven by there were a couple years back where there was uh I think it was Dr. Poland, a couple of people had Lysteria, and then there was a following year where some other companies had it on produce, and so they need to be able to track to lot level down to carton level. Um, and that's just a lot of like things need to get tracked, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, and the speed with which those companies can trace it back to that original source. Um, so you imagine you have um, I believe McDonald's, they had some lettuce. It was lettuce or onions they had issues with. They tracked that back to the to the farm that it came from. Well, unl if you're not able to say the specific date that it was picked or the field that it was from, you start imagining how big that containment can be, because then you're saying everything that came from this farm within a specific time. Um, and then how does that trickle out? How much um how many people could have been impacted, how much kind of destruction of uh goods needs to happen to be able to contain that? The greater granularity that companies can get, um, the faster they can trace that back, the faster they can help deal with people, and then the less waste that ultimately is created through that. And so by being able to say, you know, this came from this field on this day, and then being able to say these other goods also came from that specific location within this time period, and then tracing that through that supply chain really um provides that peace of mind. The consumers are looking for that some of that business continuity and safety for companies as well. So that's an area when we're working with those customers. You know, we're actively working with um uh Chipotle, uh joint project with Zebra that they've been uh pretty visible about, um, as well as Avery on doing the tags and ultimately working with over 60 different suppliers. Everything is RFID tagged at the source when those are received within store, ability for those to be easily scanned via RFID so that they know you know where it came from, when it came in, they can start tracking dates, and they know what's in their inventory, really driving just a lot of overall visibility and insights to help with food safety, inventory management, um, as well as um, you know, the freshness of that food and how long it needs to be. But then also what is the consumption? When do they need to reorder? When do they need to get new goods? So, really, just a lot of different business pieces that touch together around that piece of food safety.
2D Barcodes And GS1 Sunrise
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. You'd mentioned earlier 1D barcodes versus two, and then we have RFID. Like, what is I know there's the you mentioned this, the GS1 Sunrise initiative. What is that? What maybe you can give a quick primer of that one?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So when we think of a barcode, you think of your 1D barcode, it's pretty constrained in terms of how much information can be in there. And often people are putting some kind of identifier that's just unique to their company instead of a global identifier. Um, with the rise of RFID, there's also been this huge increase in standards that really tie in with some of those regulatory needs. So there are now the standards body GS1 has outlined a whole host of uh different components around um you know what a unique good is in terms of you know what that item is, you know, the lot batch, the date, the location, all of these that are standardized. When we shift from that 1D barcode to a 2D, that allows companies to start adopting some of those standards so that not only for their own records for keeping track of things, but if they need to report for an auditing purpose, they need they want to share with other supply chain partners, they they have that opportunity. And then another key piece, if you're moving to a 2D barcode, you also then as a goods manufacturer have an opportunity to engage with your end customer. Um, so this then gives that opportunity, your end customer can scan things. So if you want, you have a lot of things around um, you know, if if companies are very focused on um, you know, how renewable uh the items are, um, if they are very focused on where and how they manufacture so that it's sustainable, that they're doing things in an ethical fashion. We're seeing some companies really latch onto that and include information in some of those 2D barcodes so that that customer can really understand what that product is, where it came from, and in some cases, you know, when you're done with that product, how you can um you know recycle or reuse or pass things on. So, really a lot of doors being opened with that advent of 2D barcodes. And uh GS1's really driving this shift from that standard 1D UPC into that 2D so that you know in 2027 we can start presenting companies and consumers with a lot more information.
SPEAKER_01So as an end user, I can actually get data about that product, not just a unique identifier. So that it'll be embedded. Is that also embeddable in a lot of the RFID initiatives that people are rolling out?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned earlier the EU's digital product passport. That's really kind of the gist of what they're working to do there. That's something so that you know, there's certain areas that they've already focused in, I think batteries and tires, but they're expanding into apparel and other categories to, you know, for those governmental as well as for that consumer purposes, so people can see everything that that's happening. You we have one um retail manufacturer that we've worked with, um, and you know, being able to create the scannable QR code that launches a website, now that user can see this article of clothing, the fabric came from this area. Um, it's a recyclable fabric or a biodegradable, um, uh all these hosts of different categories that uh that those users can see.
Why RFID Adoption Is Accelerating
SPEAKER_01So in summary, the industry has moved from the just inventory management, you know, this is the product, this is on the shelves, to now you have life cycle visibility, you have track and trace, you know where things are sourced from, and you can embed a ton of other data into it, um, which is helping meet a lot of these standards um both on the barcode side and RFID side, which is I think is a good good segue into our our next topic, which was the uh the RFID. And I think like last time you and I talked, we uh we always joke about the the year of the RFID. It's uh it's been coming for uh for 25 years now. Um it does feel like in the last three years, RFID has gone from you know being sort of fringe to being everywhere. A lot is driven by, I believe Walmart was the first to push standards for all their vendors for certain higher prices, and then a lot of other manufacturers and retailers started having RFID. Like, what would you describe as the overall like here's why it's actually been very adopted in the last three or four years as opposed to the previous 15?
SPEAKER_00I think we've really seen a tremendous change in terms of the cost per tag has dropped as well as the capabilities of the readers. Um and you're really cementing on a few uh types of modes that those work in. Um, even you're previously trying to get some of the physics of what scanned the movement and all of that was very challenging. And now a lot of different uh hardware vendors are including that just as part of how these devices work. And so whether you're a retailer or a distribution or warehousing application, you can pretty easily put something over an entry or exit point and be able to know what's going in, what's going out automatically. Um so just that the whole automated capability that's there uh with the cost going down really has maken a big impact. We see a lot of this play out. Um, there's in a lot of jobs that are particularly in like a warehousing space, see very high worker turnover. So then you get into these positions, and and I would say this applies to retail as well. Um, how much do you need to train people versus having things that can be automated? And RFID is tied in so well with automation that it has really simplified things. So that instead of needing to train a worker on how they're gonna use a barcode scanner to scan everything, enter things, manually process this and that, they can much more seamlessly have a fixed reader that's just seeing everything pass by certain points and tie that in with the system. Um, so that automation, the impact on the workers has really been transformative.
SPEAKER_01I've also seen uh the forklifts, actually putting RFID readers mounted on forklifts. And I think you mentioned this, but Zebra and a bunch of other companies are moving to all their core devices have a SKU that includes RFID for you know the close range, the three to four feet away. So I think it's gonna be a lot more value coming out of that as more devices have that at a lower cost. I know the it was first it was the the I guess the tags were 15 cents, now they're sub-five cents as you get the scale. And now the I think the next advent is really like the readers, how do you get the readers down? How do you make it through the readings everywhere? But yeah, it does make it a lot easier. When you think about warehouse optimization, like what are the the the biggest big business cases or what's the biggest reasons you've seen people in the warehouse start moving to RFID, other than just you know Walmart telling them they have to?
SPEAKER_00You know, ultimately I would say for us, the the thing that often stands out to a lot of companies is the amount of loss that they have, um, you know, losing items, misplaced items, that a lot of those prices really start stacking up. And so that's been an area that we first focus in on with companies. And a lot of the, you know, when we first start talking with companies, you know, it's often not um a conversation around going across the entire operations, but often there's usually key parts of that business where they're seeing a bigger impact. So we have some companies, maybe they have more expensive goods, they have more expensive assets, so um, you know, tooling or whatever within their industry, and they really need that's like their top priority to focus in on. So what we do is we work with them, focus in on that first area, then they start seeing value, they look to expand, and then they start looking also at some of the efficiency of uh you know workers, how they can better position their resources and all of that. But oftentimes it it really is that loss that's driving a lot of what we have.
SPEAKER_01Um what's the threshold for that? So is there I know in the past, I know like some of the jewelry companies, or even like within um retailers that had jewelry, that was a big thing. It's a$2,000 item. You know, you can afford to put a 15 cent tag on it, which sounds silly now to say out loud, but like what is the threshold for where it makes sense to tag items versus not um for that the loss prevention or just being able to have accountability?
SPEAKER_00With bartender track and trace essentials, we're actually coming in at a quite a low price point, just a couple thousand dollars. And then if you look at packaging that with um a low-end mobile reader, um, you're really not looking at that expensive of a solution. Um, the ease of deploying that is there as well. And so what we're able to go to companies, you know, especially if you've got high-end value items, you can see your ROI within a month or two. Um, it really can be that fast. So, really trying to make sure that there's that ROI calculator, say, here's the total cost of solution. You start plugging in, what are you seeing in terms of your loss? Um uh and and that's where you know, some of those companies with high value items, it doesn't have to be jewelry. We have um we have one customer we were talking with that does granite countertops. Um, you wouldn't think that you know you're losing granite countertops, but imagine you know, there's uh they look pretty similar. So when someone goes in and they pick the one out that they want, you need to make sure they're getting the exact one that they they need. Um, but that's another high value item. There's you're gonna have lower quantity of those, but still high value. So, you know, ultimately those ROI calculates really help you get in and demonstrate that business case. But as I mentioned, many of our customers are seeing ROI very quickly, um, generally within the first 12 months of deploying, and then looking for growth beyond that.
SPEAKER_01So you so if I wanted to do like test this out in a warehouse, let's say I have eyeglasses and those are sunglasses that are expensive, um, and I want to start tracking those, and they look the same. A lot of them look the same. So you can have someone that's like$200 more to your point that looks like the one that's$100 cheaper or$200 cheaper. Easy is it for me to put um yeah, track and trace and then some labels that actually have RFID on them into a facility. Is that a$10,000 project for me to go? And it seems like it'd be pretty quick to recover uh the the cost of that investment if I'm losing 10 less sunglasses.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so if you're if you're having you know kind of a smaller, small to mid-size warehouse, you very easily for less than$10,000 can um you can get a mid-size printer, you can have bartender to do your labeling, you can get your tags, start tagging your goods, you get bartender track and choice to help you do your inventory and tracking management and a low-end mobile device. Um easily for$10,000, you can have that overall solution and then be able to tag everything as well as manage all of that within that space. Then you start looking at, well, what is your loss rate? Um, what are some of those efficiency and time gains by being able to know where everything is at all times? Um, that's a pretty compelling story. Now, does it require some process changes? Absolutely, but that's kind of the part of some of these disruptive solutions. You don't need to send somebody to look for things. You know, you want to change your process because we now can drive um, you know, you can alter behaviors based on what we're doing. Um, we have a customer uh who's focused in the iWare area, and they actually are deploying the solution focused in on customer satisfaction. They were seeing um some of their customers were not getting everything within their packages that they wanted. So you're putting, you know, even on their side, they have like a thank you gift that goes with it, and those weren't always going into the packages, and people were complaining. So great, let's tag all these different pieces, make sure everything's within that um that shipment that's going out, and you know, looking to raise that customer satisfaction score.
Printing Still Anchors Item Identity
SPEAKER_01That's not not just loss, but also customer sat and yeah, making sure they're having less returns on that. Um with RFID, is printing still gonna be around? Is it still important? And if so, why?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right now the primary way to make sure you can identify an individual item level good is you need some way to put that unique identifier on it. And today, that's where printing and labeling is. Whether it's a barcode, whether it's RFID, um, that there's not much technology out there that's really altering that. You know, we do have, we also work in the direct marking space. Um, you know, that's not necessarily lay uh a label going on, but it is labeling. But even there, that's often not that unique identifier. So all of those, there's still some way to separate each item from the other so that you can then get that uh traceability of that good. So right now, um, you know, this is our primary way that every the technology that everyone is using today, uh, we're not seeing some any dramatic changes. So that ability to uniquely identify something through that printing, labeling, tagging is still the best thing out there that everyone's still using.
SPEAKER_01Until we get rid of humans in the warehouse and then we'll just be uh be all uh RFID robots one day.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Even then, I still think they're gonna print. Uh they're gonna just have printing robots and tagging robots that are putting things.
AI Insights From Label And Movement Data
SPEAKER_01Printing and tagging robots. Um on the the sort of future edge or things that are coming, the I know the big topic that er, you know, ever everybody talks about is AI. Um and I I think the thing what's the description I heard? Somebody's like the data is the new oil for AI. Um with 110 billion labels a year, it feels like you guys have an oil field of uh of AI, uh, I guess oil or fuel. Um how are you guys leveraging that or working with your customers to help them leverage your data and all this data you're generating, not just the labels, but also the track and trace pieces and feeding AI systems with that. What does it look like for for bartender?
SPEAKER_00So I'm we have uh you we mentioned that 110 billion labels. There is a massive amount of data that's generated. Um, you know, a lot of that is, you know, I would say more unique and proprietary to the customers, and we always make sure we respect those data rights of our customers. There are some kind of aggregated trends though. You know, as we start looking at um the volume of labels that are being printed, you know, the industries that they're going into, it does start giving us visibility into where are some of these trends that are going on, what's being impacted. You were asking earlier, rise in RFID, what are we seeing there? Um similarly, when we start seeing tie-ins with some of these specific industries, um, you also can start seeing some shifts around what's happening there. So, what we're really working to do is to partner very closely with our customers to empower them with the data that's generated through their systems. So I would say one area on the track and trace side where we are really looking at what's going in, what's um any movement and usage, change in um state of a good, all of that, those are things that you know, really making sure that we have those data analytics, that we have more of an agentic interface so that people can more easily ask those questions, easily get the information back. Those are things that we're really driving forward to have in our product later in the year, so that companies can pretty easily pull information up. So we've got a few proof of concepts we're very pleased with. Um and then also even just some of the ability to more easily manipulate, visualize some of that data. And then on the labeling side, um, we've added in a number of things just starting to help customers understand the their usage and the volume, and then that's leading into some things we're planning to do to start talking about when you're seeing some changes in those patterns. So if there's a company where their normal routine is printing a certain number of labels per day or per week, and then you start seeing some variance on that, we want to make sure that we're flagging that to those companies so that they're aware that they're seeing that deviation from standard behavior.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can imagine it's a lot easier to find uh LP type issues or boxes falling off the back of a truck when the your your label count starts dropping and things like that.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_01You you know, with with um a lot of the I've heard you've heard the phrase, you know, stats is dying because of AI, which I don't know if that's actually true or not, but the you know, how are you guys defensible, or how is a a company like bartender going to be defensible with when I can just go to Claude and say, go build me a barcode track and trace app? Like what's what's the the big differentiary you guys have against some of these newer AI tools?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, ultimately for us, when we look at the install base that we have and then that data coming through. Um, you have some college student who just wants to go and create a new uh labeling software, you know, they could do that, but they don't have those ties to all those companies that we do and that deep install base. So that's where for us that whole data strategy is very key. And we're working on really growing that and investing in that um to empower our customers uh to so that they see that value and continue to grow the business in that way. So, you know, as I mentioned, you know, really just making sure that there's analytics front and center for each of those customers, making sure they understand usage, they understand um you know historical um analysis of what's happened in the past, tying that in with future predictive analytics as well.
Where To Find BarTender And Close
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of a lot of uh experience in history. You can't really overcome that with just throwing tomato at it. Go make me an app. Uh a lot of key topics here. I think just to do a quick recap before we wrap up, yeah, the big things are a lot of the requirements and standards are driving more visibility in track and training. So that's something that you've seen as a trend. It'll probably happen more. There's a lot of call it RL ROI actually attached to that. Um, so visibility around um, like that example you gave with the increasing customer stat scores, just making sure everything's in the bag when it goes out. Um, and then, you know, with with AI, I just I keep thinking about that that number, the 110 billion data points, being able to use that, even if I'm one of your 200,000 clients, but be able to take that data and apply that to my AI and get get more visibility into it. Still think there's a lot of value there. If people wanted to find out more about bartender or Mojiks or the like a bar contender tech and trace, where would they where would they reach out to you guys to learn more about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. You can look us up at bartendersoftware.com. Um, so there we've got everything you can learn about the company and the product offers. Um, we also were going to be at Modex, so please come by our booth, B7513. So Seagull Software Bartender is going to be there. We'd love to meet folks face to face, uh, be able to teach you more about bartender and bartender track and trace.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Awesome. Dan, thanks for being on today. Appreciate it and appreciate the insights. If anybody has questions, feel free to stop by their booth at Modex. That was uh B7513 if I wrote it down right. So um definitely check it out. And Dan, thank you very much for uh for being on today.
SPEAKER_00You're very welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Brett.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for tuning in to Frontline Mobility Edge. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe for more content every month. If you'd like to learn more about Blue Fletch, check out the link in the description or visit us at bluefletch.com. See you next time.