Can you believe that Amazon launched 30 years ago? It was one of the earliest e-commerce ventures on the then-nascent Internet. Born as an online bookstore, the company has more recently transformed the world by making goods and services easily accessible to anyone with a computer or smartphone – and inspiring others to do the same. What made Amazon different from traditional brick-and-mortar stores wasn’t just that you could buy online.

It’s no secret that demand planning is a critical component in managing a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. To achieve success in this competitive market, you must anticipate and meet customers' needs efficiently. But I think it’s important we talk more about how to manage the two fundamental factors that influence demand planning: pricing and trade promotions.

After my last post about responsible AI practices, some people rightfully inquired about Zebra’s practices. So, I thought it would be best to answer these questions publicly. The first thing I want to stress is that our underlying Code of Conduct, company policies, and departmental procedures provide the foundation for everything we do at Zebra.

Editor's Note: This post first published in April 2021. Jenny updated it in December 2024. Did you know that public safety agencies were among the earliest adopters of rugged tablet technology over 25 years ago? It’s true.

If you're assessing a new machine vision project and you want to get it right, there’s only one thing you must do: Ask the right questions. It’s that simple. The likelihood of nailing the perfect solution without completing a thorough assessment is low, and the likelihood of completing a thorough assessment is low if you don’t ask the right questions of every consultant, technology provider, and integrator every time.

If sales are holding steady or even growing, you may not realize that your convenience rating is dropping with shoppers and that, at any moment, they may decide you’re no longer the best option for them. Every time they come into your store, they’re judging you. They’re deciding whether it was convenient or not to browse your inventory or buy what they needed.

Recently, on the Your Edge podcast, I spoke about how your organization’s culture directly affects your employees’ ability to support customers – how your values influence employee actions. Well, this spurred some conversations about whether it’s more important to invest in your organization’s culture for the sake of your customers or your employees.

You may have heard of Scrum but aren’t sure what it is or how it benefits the business. Or perhaps you use it but others in your organization don’t understand it. As a certified Scrum master, I’d like to share a bit about how I’ve used Scrum to transform my work and my team’s working model to improve efficiency, among other things. I truly believe it can help you once you (or others in your organization) understand its purpose and how it’s meant to be applied.

If you use Zebra desktop, industrial, or mobile printers, you’re going to want to download the free Zebra Print App from the Google Play Store on all your Android mobile devices today. Why? Because this is the app that’s going to help you instantly get your Zebra printers connected and secured on your network. It’s also the app that’s going to make it super simple for your frontline workers to print labels, PDFs, pictures, and other media from their Android mobile devices.