Grainger releases app for online product ordering from mobile devices
W.W. Grainger Inc., Lake Forest, Ill., now has a free mobile app for iPhone and Android smart phones that provides instant access to the company's 900,000 products. Customers can use the app to search for products, see account pricing, check product availability, locate Grainger branches and order products.
In a press release announcing the availablilty of the app, Geoffrey Robertson, Grainger V.P. of ecommerce strategy and planning, said, “We find that many people work away from their desks. By allowing these customers access to Grainger's products anytime and anywhere, Grainger's mobile technology helps them work more efficiently. We are moving beyond the standard trend of using mobile for information-gathering and leveraging it to help companies manage their workflow.”
Several interesting features of the app include a voice search feature powered by Nuance's cloud-based Dragon voice recognition technology; information on real-time product availability, so customers can find out when a product will ship or if it is available for pickup at a nearby Grainger branch; and access to orders placed online within the last six months, so customers can check order status and reorder using the “My Orders” feature. The iPhone version of the Grainger mobile app is available at the Apple App Store and the Android version of the app is available on Google Play. Details
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.